After The Flood
by hiddenhibernian
Summary: Exiled in disgrace, Hermione has painstakingly built a life for herself as a Muggle after the war. Meanwhile, a corrupt Ministry rules the wizarding world unopposed. Draco Malfoy approaches Hermione with an offer, in an attempt to save the world as he knows it. Trust is a precious commodity and scars from the war run deep. A/U from the Battle of Hogwarts. Warning: Character deaths
1. Prologue

**A/N:**

**All hail to beta extraordinaire MysticDew, who has whipped this story into shape - thank you! **

**This story is complete in 36 chapters, with a lot of editing remaining. I will post a new chapter every Friday, real life permitting.  
**

* * *

**Prologue**

**-oOo-**

_"For death has made me wise and bitter and strong;_

_And I am rich in all that I have lost"_

'Memory', Siegfried Sassoon, 1918

* * *

She was laughing in the drizzling rain, her arm wrapped around the waist of the untidy-looking good-for-nothing with the ridiculous black leather jacket. He thought the wastrel's name was Daniel; he'd heard it before, floating on the wind over to the dark corner where he usually was hidden. She was bringing him back to her flat for a quick roll in the hay before she sent him on his way.

Daniel might get into her bed, but she didn't let him in anywhere else. She had always been a smart girl.

Together, the couple disappeared into the modern-looking lobby and got into the lift. After a few minutes the lights in her sitting room went on; they must have been detained somewhere on the way. The spectator had no desire to dwell on what they had been up to.

Up there, she was pouring them a glass of wine each, even though Daniel probably would have preferred beer. Her face was animated and the colour high in her cheeks after the drinks she'd already had in the bar. He had noticed that she always seemed to bring Daniel, or others like him, home after a night out when her inhibitions were lowered by alcohol.

There would soon be a time when she would regret indiscretions like Daniel. The observer would see to that. But until then, he was stuck out here in the rain, watching her smile at another man.

There was plenty of time to weave his plans while he was waiting.


	2. Chapter 1 - Reunion on Bermondsey Street

**Disclaimer:** The characters and the Harry Potter universe don't belong to me; they were created by the amazing J.K. Rowling, who not only is a fantastic writer but also doesn't seem to mind fanfiction writers playing with her characters. I make no money from this, which is intended as a work of tribute, and am very grateful for her generosity.

**Thanks to the amazing MysticDew for all the support and ****suggestions! **

* * *

**Chapter 1**

**Reunion on Bermondsey Street**

**-oOo-**

* * *

**11PM, the 1st of February 2005 - Flat 11, 251 Bermondsey Street, London**

Hermione kicked her shoes off and plonked her keys in the blue bowl that used to be Aunt Mildred's, one of few remains from her former life.

It had been a long day at the hotel with all sorts of disasters, from small (Jerome dropping a whole tray of canapes meant for the wedding reception that was in full swing) to large (she'd had to dismiss the night porter for being drunk on the job and harassing female late arrivals), and she was exhausted. She couldn't decide what to do first: have a shower, eat or just collapse on the couch. At this point all were equally attractive.

The choice was taken from her as she spotted a tall figure seated on one of the chairs around the dining table. He was sitting rigidly upright, as if to separate himself as far as possible from her prosaic Harvey Norman chair. Suddenly her sitting room filled with light from within, in a way she hadn't seen for years and that had nothing to do with light bulbs or electricity.

Hermione turned cold with fear and longing as she stared at the stranger in a fruitless attempt to place him. When he raised his chin in response to her mute scrutiny, it set her on the right trail.

Once she had the basic shape of his pointed face, it was easy to strip away the lines around his eyes (she had them too, even though both of them were only in their mid-twenties), the extra weight that had filled out the scrawny boy she had known, and the guarded expression on his face, and the stranger waiting for her in her flat was clearly recognisable as Draco Malfoy.

For one terror-inducing breath, she thought he was his father.

Lucius Malfoy had seemed to be in perfect command of every situation until he fell out of favour with Voldemort. His son had somehow lacked the sort of polished, masterful confidence that seemed to relegate people around him to puppets on a string. Draco Malfoy had always constituted less of a threat than his deadly relations, and it had not been lost on Hermione that he had failed to do his worst on the last two occasions she had seen him.

No longer. Now Draco Malfoy was lethal and ready to strike, and his face gave her absolutely no clue what he was thinking. His wand rested in his right hand, idle for the moment; she knew that he knew that she wouldn't be able to defend herself should he use it against her.

"What are you doing in my flat, Malfoy?" Anger won out on fear, as she spat out her question. He was breaking the law by being there; she found it hard to think of anyone she would be more put out breaking the law for.

"I have a proposition for you, Granger." He didn't flinch under her furious glare, further proving his mettle. He would be quite decorative as a statue, she thought. Pity about his personality, really.

"What could you possibly have to propose to me?" And what would you want in return, she wondered silently.

"A mutual undertaking to both our advantages."

"An offer I can't refuse?" she asked. The reference was lost on Malfoy, and he seemed pleased that she was becoming more amenable.

"Yes. Exactly."

"I'm not interested. Leave my flat now, or I'll call the police." This had gone on long enough, and Hermione had better get him out as soon as possible. If she could; he probably had four stone on her, although it was hard to tell when he was sitting down. She was about as likely to chuck him out on her own as the Chudley Cannons were to have won the League since she last checked.

Fervently hoping his disinterest in all things Muggle hadn't changed much over the years, she reached behind her to grab her mobile. Of course, if he chose he could use magic on her and she wouldn't stand a chance. Fear was winning out over anger now, but she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her frightened.

Their eyes remained locked on each other as she slowly, slowly edged her arm behind her towards her mobile and let it slide into her hand. Its familiar shape and the promise it carried of reinforcements from the normal world gave her faint comfort.

"I'll give you Weasley back. You'll be vindicated and your sentence overturned. Everyone will know why you really killed Potter, and you'd get your magic back."

Hermione held her phone limply in her right hand, making no effort to use it. Why was he offering her this? She didn't entertain the thought that he was serious for a second; those things were simply not possible.

Then she looked at him again, looking properly at this unfamiliar, implacable face of the man who had grown out of the boy she had known, and she wasn't so sure anymore. He must want something quite badly since he had found her here, and he hadn't hexed her yet.

"And why would you do that? What's in it for you?" she asked him, ever direct. A ghost of a smile traversed his face and made him look a little more like he used to, before his features set back into the smooth mask again.

"Revenge, restoration of the family name and a return to our rightful place in society." She snorted. What could Hermione Granger, banished from the wizarding world and living as a Muggle, possibly have to offer Draco Malfoy to achieve all that?

In short, clipped sentences he laid out the current state of affairs to her.

Unsurprisingly, the Malfoys hadn't done well after the war. The cabal now ruling the wizarding world consisted of a core of highly placed Ministry bureaucrats from solid wizarding families, which previously had been overshadowed by the pure-blood aristocrats in the race to high office. They had run the nuts and bolts of the Ministry behind the scenes for the last few centuries. As Voldemort fell and the depleted Order of the Phoenix failed to pick up the pieces, they rose to prominence.

Someone had to run the wizarding world, and who better than the ladies and gentlemen who knew the minutiae of the administration?

They were generally able, ambitious and fed up with being stuck between Voldemort and the mercurial, uncontrollable and independent Order of the Phoenix. Order was required to restore the wizarding world, and order would be had at all costs.

The first order of the day was tidying up after the Battle of Hogwarts; sentencing Hermione Granger to lose her magic and be banished from the wizarding world neatly disposed of the only obvious hero to rally around that still was standing. It also helped discrediting the Order of the Phoenix, placing it under suspicion for being complicit in the demise of the Boy-Who-Died. Stowing Ronald Weasley in the Janus Thickey ward at St Mungo's ensured that no objections to this version of events would be raised.

Most of the more influential members of the Order had fallen in the battle, and those with sufficient clout to investigate why Hermione Granger turned on Harry Potter had to fight to save their own skins instead. Quite convincingly, they painted her as a traitor who probably got off too lightly.

The general population was too busy dusting themselves off and seeing who else had survived to notice what was happening. The new administration swiftly took control of the narrative of the war, and over the years the Ministry subtly extended its influence.

Hermione was sitting opposite Malfoy at her dinner table as he spoke, not taking her eyes off him for a moment. Whether it was true or not, his summary of events betrayed that he had learnt something since their sixth year, the last time she really spent any time around him. The old Draco Malfoy had been bright enough, but she couldn't recall him being so dispassionate and clinical in his analysis at Hogwarts.

"So where are you in this brave new world, Malfoy?" she wondered, itching to ask if he was sleeping rough in Knockturn Alley but judging it imprudent. He held all the cards, and he knew it.

"I am persona non grata with the Ministry, the Manor has been confiscated, as has most of our fortune, and my mother is still under house arrest." Hermione forbore from pointing out that they only had themselves to blame, and wondered briefly what had happened to his father. Better not ask this tight-lipped, self-assured stranger.

"That's all very interesting, but it doesn't explain why you're here. Breaking the law, I might add." And this time he wouldn't be able to escape the consequences by way of a timely bribe, she thought with satisfaction. She would prefer not to be involved in anything illegal, but she had to hear him out before she would try to kick him out again. Mentioning Ron had ensured that, which the bastard probably had counted on.

"I intend to restore our reputation through restoring yours."

"And how do you plan to achieve that? What does my reputation have to do with your family, anyway?"

"My plan has several phases. I hope you'll be able to keep up," he drawled. Obviously he felt better trading insults, back on familiar ground.

"I shall do my best," she replied sweetly, refusing to be sucked in. For a second Malfoy almost looked disappointed.

"First, you marry me." Hermione almost flew off her chair to protest, but his raised hand and cold eyes kept her seated. "In secret," he added, lest she would want to send an announcement to the morning papers on the spot.

"Secondly, I shall put certain… events in motion, to ensure Ronald Weasley wakes up in St. Mungo's. His happy recovery will be widely publicised. I trust that he'll be in possession of the facts exonerating you from killing Potter for any other than the purest of motives?"

Hermione almost didn't flinch. She had killed Harry, and that was that. However, if Ron could share his memories and tell someone where Harry's memories had been hidden at Hogwarts, the Wizengamot would have to overturn her sentence.

"Yes, as long as there is sufficient pressure for the case to be reviewed again," she confirmed calmly, meeting Malfoy's gaze. Tell me what you want, you bastard, or so help me God you're leaving head first, she thought, keeping her temper tightly reined in but on a sufferance.

"Thirdly, you'll return to the wizarding world, which at this stage will be falling over its feet to welcome you back…" They shared a look conveying their mutual disgust for the utter stupidity of the masses that made this outcome entirely predictable. However different they may be, neither of them would have their opinions spoon-fed to them by the Daily Prophet.

"Finally you reunite with me, during your quest to free the house-elves or some such. Romance blossoms between us, culminating in our wedding – in public this time. Together, we reform the wizarding world, and the manor and our confiscated assets are restored to my family." Malfoy calmly outlined this… this fantasy, and even as Hermione dismissed it as outrageous, his quiet conviction that this was going to happen almost convinced her that it was possible.

"Why in the world would you want to marry me?" she asked, in disbelief. His faint smile didn't reach his eyes.

"Because you're the only way I can seem to regain what we've lost."

"Why on earth would I want to marry you?" Malfoy must have some sort of answer for that; she certainly didn't have any.

"Because otherwise you'll be stuck here forever. Scraping a living in the Muggle world, never really belonging. Cut off from everything that should be yours." Before Hermione could protest that he didn't even believe that himself, that he had wanted her to go back to the Muggle world from the first time he met her, he continued.

"The Weasel won't hang in there indefinitely. Sooner or later, his family won't be in a position to make enough fuss about his death to be a deterrent for the Ministry. He's also at risk for organ failure from being kept unconscious artificially." He correctly anticipated her next objection, and she suddenly remembered that his mentor had been an accomplished Legilimens.

"Merely knowing his coma is artificial is not enough to release him from it. In the event of suspicions being raised, someone within the hospital will quickly and quietly dispatch him to the great hereafter. The Weasleys would be none the wiser, of course," he said blandly, and Hermione was torn between anger and abject fear. "If you want to get him out alive, you need my help," he continued.

"But why do I have to marry you? If I promise I will help restoring the Malfoy name," she almost laughed at the absurdity of what she was saying, but refrained, as it hardly would be helpful at this juncture, "and getting your money and Malfoy Manor back, why would we need to get married?" She went quiet before continuing, trying to summon every little bit of sincerity she was capable of: "If you know anything about me, you know I keep my word."

Malfoy almost looked regretful.

"No. That's not enough. You could change your mind."

"What if we made an Unbreakable Vow?" She was getting desperate now, but was careful not to let it show.

"You don't have any magic, so we can't."

"A legally binding contract?" Hermione ventured, but he didn't even bother responding to that.

"But we couldn't get a divorce…" she said slowly, remembering long-forgotten customs from her adoptive society. Long before the Statute of Secrecy, the wizarding world had looked with disdain at the dangerous liberalism rampant in the Muggle world. "We would have to stay married until one of us dies."

Hermione was struggling to keep her face impassive, and the room seemed to swerve around her for a moment when she drew the logical conclusion. Good God, he always had hated her. How deliciously ironic wouldn't it be to use her to restore his reputation and fortune, and then quietly disposed of her to marry one of his own and father little pure-blood Malfoy heirs?

"Granger?" Any doubts that he was using Legilimency on her were dispelled as she looked up into his grey eyes. Malfoy's face was contorted in rage, and she was suddenly more afraid than she had been for a long time.

"I will not kill you, Granger," he said between clenched teeth. Obviously that hit a nerve; she could only hope it was because he never actually had killed anyone. "If you want, I will swear an Unbreakable Vow to that effect. My mother can be the Bonder."

"I think I would like to draft that Vow." Hermione tried to regain her confidence and managed to sound matter-of-fact rather than wobbly as she spoke, although her heart still seemed to be beating loud enough for the neighbours to hear.

"Agreed." He seemed to calm down as well, returning to his smooth demeanour from earlier on. "If you manage to reform our society to the point of introducing divorce, I will consent. Regard it as an incentive." It sounded almost as if he was making a joke.

"Now that that's settled, will you agree to my proposal?" She had the urge to laugh like a maniac again, as she realised that it really was a proper proposal.

"It would be a marriage in name only," Hermione said, testing the limits of his madness.

"Yes," he confirmed, his haughty look making it clear that he had no wish to sully his hands more than absolutely necessary.

"This is stupid, Malfoy. Did you have a nervous breakdown while I was away?" His only response was to glare at her. "You must really be down on your luck."

"Be that as it may, these are my terms. You are of course free to decline my offer." Malfoy had her at his mercy, and they both knew it. Even if Hermione had had no desire to return to their world or be vindicated for her part in Harry's death, there was no way she could turn him down and condemn Ron to linger in St. Mungo's, until some bureaucrat decided to pull the plug.

"Be careful, Malfoy," she said evenly, surprising him. "Your tide might be high now, and you can get it all your way, but you won't have the upper hand all the time."

He looked at her, an elegantly raised eyebrow succinctly conveying his scepticism. He was so handsome as an adult; it made her trust him even less. Too smooth for the everyday world, he threw everything else into shade in comparison. She felt small and mousy and ordinary opposite him, but fought it with all her power.

"You're using the people I love against me, and I won't forgive you for that. We could be married for a very long time. There will come a time when you'll be at my mercy, and I promise you I'll do my very worst for you then." Hermione did her best to sound intimidating; she might have nothing to her name right now, but he couldn't have forgotten that she had always got the better of him in the past.

"No," he said abruptly. "I won't change my terms."

"Then you'll get what's coming to you, Draco Malfoy, and I'll show you the same consideration as you have shown me now, when the time comes."

His shrug seemed to communicate that it was only natural that he would use it against her, if she insisted on foolish Gryffindor sentimentality.

"So you agree to my terms?" he said. What else could she do?

"Yes." It felt like she had sold her soul, had she had any left to sell.


	3. Chapter 2 - Wheels Within Wheels

**This story has been improved immensely by the kind offices of MysticDew - she's brilliant!  
**

**Thanks also to MadameGiry25 for giving this chapter an extra once-over - I really appreciate it! **

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**Chapter 2**

** Wheels Within Wheels**

-oOo-

**8AM, the 2nd of February 2005 – London**

The following day, Hermione bore down like an avenging angel on the unsuspecting staff of Mackey's hotel. She was fuelled with three cups of coffee after a sleepless night. While she may be plotting to overthrow the government of the wizarding world for a second time, it was no excuse to allow shoddy work to pass inspection in her corner of the Muggle world.

She phoned Allie at the recruitment agency to request a new kitchen porter for the third time this month. Preferably, she wanted one who spoke English this time. Hermione found herself wondering what Malfoy was doing while she was waiting for the CVs to come through. Whatever it was, it had to be more glamorous than this.

* * *

In Knockturn Alley, Draco Malfoy was swearing. In vain, he tried to get rid of the green slime that insisted on clinging onto the hem of his robes. _For the love of Merlin, you'd think the ignorant buffoons that insist this is the bright new dawn of Wizardkind would manage to clean up this place a bit_, he thought, nerves on edge.

He hated being here. He hated sneaking around, trying to meet up inconspicuously with his father's old cronies while constantly looking over his shoulder, and most of all he absolutely hated that he was here to save Ronald Weasley. It had to be done, but Draco was damned if he was going to be happy about it. Finally, he spotted the dark red hood he was looking for skulking in the shadows near Fleetwood's Potions Supplies. As he passed beneath the arch in the middle of the alley, Draco let his own hood slide down. It revealed a quick glimpse of the grey mop he currently was sporting. Having signalled his presence he walked into the nearest pub of ill repute, Malarkey's.

Half an hour later, someone slid into the bar stool next to him. Even if Draco's reflexes hadn't been as sharp as ever, the smell of onions would have alerted him to the presence of Saul Bracken, janitor at St. Mungo's. The man must be running an onion farm in his spare time.

"So I guess this is it, then? No more nipping out for cosy chats by the fireplace? Truth to tell, I won't mind not having to come up with any more excuses for the wife. She probably thinks I have a bit on the side!" Bracken laughed loudly at his own joke. With one cold look, Draco quelled his mirth.

Draco went over the instructions with the nitwit five times, before he could be certain that they would be obeyed to the letter. Finally, Draco handed over a small vial. It gleamed purple in the gloomy pub for a moment, before it disappeared down Bracken's sleeve. It would have been easier to use a charm, but Draco refused to bet the success of his plan on Bracken's ability to use a wand surreptitiously in the correct manner.

If the Weasel didn't make it, Granger would slip through his fingers and he couldn't afford that. No matter how tempting it was.

Reluctantly, Draco had to admit that the Ministry had been rather ingenious where Weasley was concerned. Initially, Weasley had been hit with a common-or-garden Blasting Curse from Yaxley and brought to St. Mungo's after the battle. Without interference, he would have been back on his feet in short order.

However, there had been meddling from the Ministry officials who had been watching anxiously who would prevail in the conflict. Rather than taking sides, they had observed and were primed for action when it finally was clear which side was winning. Unfortunately for Ronald Weasley, they had decided it would be neater all around if he didn't wake up. If he remained unconscious, his bereaved family would be gathered around his bedside. This was infinitely preferably to having the Weasleys ask awkward questions about who was running things after the fighting had stopped.

Ultimately, Granger's insistence that that Weasley could provide proof that her version of events was true had guaranteed Weasley's continued residency at St. Mungo's. By keeping him there, two of the surviving heroes were neatly removed, paving the way for officials with a less stellar war record to quietly take over proceedings.

An expert from the Department of Mysteries had quickly been dispatched to St. Mungo's in order to ensure that Weasley stayed unconscious. Cognizant that Bill Weasley was a professional Curse-Breaker, the expert had taken considerable care to cover her tracks. No one seemed to have noticed anything amiss at all. When Draco found out the truth about Granger, it struck him as a little too convenient. Employing his rather unconventional research methods to investigate his suspicions, he soon confirmed that he had been right.

After Draco had made sure that neither of he nor Bracken had been followed from the pub, he Apparated to the current Malfoy residence.

He had sworn to himself that it never would be home. They would regain the Manor, or he would die trying. He had never been much of a masochist, so he planned to be successful.

"Draco?"

"I'm back, mother." He went into the parlour to greet her properly, kissing her pale cheek. Every time he went out, he knew his mother quietly worried about him. She would never betray it with as much as a look, but he could feel her constant concern in his bones.

She had never been a large woman, but after Draco's fifth year she had seemed to shrink as he grew up among fear and evil deeds. Now, she seemed so fragile that a gust of wind would knock her over. After losing so much already, another blow would be too much for Narcissa to endure.

Yet Draco would have to ask a lot of her, very soon.

He closed his eyes, hoping against hope that Hermione Granger would extend the obnoxious kindness she was famous for to Narcissa Malfoy. As much as he was loath to, he might even have to ask Granger to try not to upset his mother, and put his faith in her good nature. Draco Malfoy seldom placed his trust in the kindness of his fellow beings, but in this all he could do was hoping that she wouldn't let him down.

Quietly, mother and son took their tea in the small, crowded parlour. Too much of the best furniture from Narcissa's favourite rooms at the Manor had been crammed into the room. Through the French windows, the pale winter sunlight filtered in. Outside, the drabness of the small, walled garden contrasted against the defiant blue and yellow of the crocuses planted by the previous occupant.

Draco thought of Granger in her city centre apartment without anything living in it, and wondered how she would take to country life. The only things that been glowing with life and vitality and love in that drab place were her portraits.

Despite his best efforts, during the long wait for her to return he had marvelled at the Muggle artist's skill. Whoever it was had managed to convey a sense of what kind of person the subjects had been, without resorting to moving pictures or other wizarding contraptions.

He had been startled to find Potter looking out at him from his frame, mute and forever seventeen. Obviously, Granger didn't know that he lost his scar when he died. Statues of a scar-less, heroic Potter now adorned many public spaces in the wizarding world. Seeing them usually set Draco on edge, but inside Granger's picture frame Potter had somehow simultaneously seemed more what he had been like in real life, and less irritating than Draco remembered him.

Draco weighed Narcissa's fragile happiness at the moment, against having more time to prepare herself for the household being invaded by Hermione Granger. Observing the fleeting expression of peace on his mother's face as she took her tea, Draco decided that there never would be enough notice.

To hell with it, he might as well tell her now.

* * *

"Mother?"

Narcissa tore her gaze from the crocuses and turned her head towards her devastatingly handsome son. He had been such a delicate child; now he was all angles and hard surfaces.

"Yes, darling?" Draco didn't make a face at the word, the way he used to when he was younger. Narcissa wished he were still as easy to read as he was when he was a teenager.

It was hard back then, too, but at least she knew who he was. He had been brimful of desire to prove himself, to show the world that he was worthy of the Malfoy name. Now, half of the time she had no idea at all what Draco was thinking. Along the way, he had learnt from Lucius how to present a serene front to the world and to hide his real intentions even from her.

"I'm taking steps to restore our position in the world." Naturally. He would never be content to be relegated to the margins of a world where his father once shone as bright as a dying phoenix.

"Of course you are, dear. Am I permitted to know what these steps are?" she asked, almost teasingly. Draco was so secretive about his plans. He had always been, even as a boy, when his schemes had been written in rather large letters on his eager little face.

"I'm getting married," he announced, and Narcissa didn't bother hiding her joy. Her eyes lit up as she leaned forward, about to demand that he tell her everything, when he rushed in with the next sentence: "To Hermione Granger."

Narcissa was briefly puzzled. She hadn't heard that name for many years, except in connection with war commemorations. It was usually glossed over as much as possible.

"To… But Draco, wasn't that the Muggle-born who killed- What on earth are you doing?" She put down her cup and saucer with a clatter on the table. As always when she was upset, red spots were forming on her cheeks.

As a girl, Narcissa had hated how transparent she was. Bella would taunt her even worse when she saw her younger sister's discomfort painted on her face in vivid colours. Her sister had always said Narcissa wasn't behaving like a true Black; only the lowborn would betray their emotions.

"I'll bring us back where we belong," Draco told her earnestly. Unexpectedly, he took her hands, as if he was using his carefully rationed touches to make Narcissa believe him. "It's all part of my plan. With her, I'll be able to beat the Ministry and get the Manor back. Maybe-" and suddenly he was turning into the little boy she had sent off to Hogwarts again, willing to do anything to get his father's approval, "Maybe I can get them to release father too."

"But how?" Narcissa asked, almost willing to believe him and discomfited to find her hard-won resignation to their fate very nearly shattered.

"Just wait. You mustn't tell anyone, mother! It'll be official soon enough, but you must keep it secret for now." She pursed her lips and looked at him, wordlessly chastising him for his impertinence. Narcissa Black Malfoy could keep a secret. "Please wait, and you'll see how," he bid her again.

Afterwards, she wondered if Draco really had let his mask slip, or if it had been an act to prevent her from probing too deep.

No matter how things had been left between father and son, she was _almost_ certain that Draco also wanted Lucius to be released.

The doubts came as Narcissa realised that the boy she remembered had died years ago, before the end of his sixth year at Hogwarts. He had died amidst fear and Dark magic and responsibilities too heavy for him to bear, and she could never, ever get him back.

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**Thank you so much for every review, favourite or follow - it truly makes my day! **


	4. Chapter 3 - A Rude Awakening

**As always, thanks to MysticDew - she has greatly improved this story! All remaining mistakes are my own. **

* * *

**Chapter 3  
**

** Rude Awakening  
**

**-oOo-**

**1PM, the 19th of February 2005 - The Janus Thickey Ward, St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, London**

Lunch had just been served and a vaguely unappetising smell of institutional pork chops, mash and processed peas was wafting across the Janus Thickey ward. The staff nurse was gently coaxing Alice Longbottom to eat, while keeping an eye at Gilderoy Lockhart to make sure he didn't pinch Octavius Pepper's peas from under his nose.

Luke Lennings, the orderly, was busy distributing dessert; today's offering was an unappealing blancmange. His preoccupation with the quivering blobs being handed out prevented him from noticing that Ronald Weasley's hand was twitching. It was the first time Ron had moved on his own since he was carried out from Hogwarts. Normally, the most dramatic noise during lunch was the clatter of Agnes dropping a teaspoon. It would have been impossible not to notice the second time for more than six years that Ron moved of his own volition.

"HARRY!" Ron screamed at the top of his voice. Abruptly, he sat up and almost fell over as his upper extremities, unused to being upright, quickly were drained of blood. "HARRY, NO!"

His unaccustomed gyrations tripped a number of wards. Alarm bells were ringing insistently over the cacophony of Healers rushing in from the corridor outside, Gilderoy Lockhart's demands to be told what was happening right this instant, and Alice Longbottom's startled crying.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Ron had been wheeled out of the ward into a private room. After being poked and prodded for far too long, he put his foot down. He refused to let the Healers near him to cast more diagnostic charms or ask him any more questions, until they gave him some answers to his own.

Healer Pye, who remembered Ron from when Arthur Weasley was bitten by Nagini, finally took pity on him and chased away the other Healers. This would require delicate handling. Fortunately Weasley seemed to have worked most of it out on his own, probably aided by the fact that Healer Pye had a full head of hair the last time they met. Now, only stray tufts remained as a memorial of sorts to what once had been.

"Don't tell me," Ron whispered hoarsely, voice rusty from lack of use, "I'm just like Slumbering Beauty but ugly, right?" Healer Pye was Muggle-born, and managed to understand the reference after only a moment's hesitation.

"Not quite," he said in his bedside voice, a reassuring baritone he considered one of his best assets as a Healer. "You were unconscious for a very long time, however. It's most unexpected to have you waking up like that!" Pye's tone of voice suggested that he didn't like to encourage that sort of thing in his patients. "I don't quite understand how your state could have changed so suddenly. You've been extremely stable for a long time. I even read up on Muggle coma patients and tried some of their tests, but there was no-"

Healer Pye found his shirt being gripped with surprising strength and was pulled towards an irate Ron.

"How long have I been here?" he demanded, almost shaking the unfortunate Healer up and down for emphasis.

"Six years," Pye wheezed, swearing to himself he'd lay off the cigarettes and start taking his broom out again at the weekend, "and, let me think, nine months." Ron let him go abruptly and he staggered backwards, trying to regain his balance.

"Is Harry dead? Harry Potter?"

Pye was about to remonstrate, pointing out that he wasn't a complete imbecile and did know who the Saviour of the wizarding world was, before he remembered who was asking.

"Yes, he died in the Final Battle at Hogwarts." The capitals were clearly audible, Pye being an attentive reader of the updated version of _Hogwarts, A History_. As his patient seemed to collapse, he moved forward with concern – but was that an expression of relief on Weasley's face?

* * *

Owls were dispatched, Floo calls made, and a trainee Healer tipped off _The Daily Prophet_, thereby ensuring he would have enough money for pints for the rest of the year.

Before long, the Weasley clan had set up camp in Ron's room. The Healers had refused to release him yet, darkly alluding to previous patients who had seemed as right as rain after waking up from a coma, until suddenly they weren't.

The Weasleys didn't let that put a damper on their spirits, and they had almost managed to turn the Janus Thickey Ward into a carnival. Ron was introduced to his nieces and nephews for the first time. Victoire primly sat next to her mother and read a book quietly, but young Fred escaped his doting family as often as possible, running away down the hall as fast as his chubby toddler legs would carry him. Intermittent wails from Dominique made some of the residents long for the good old days, when no one even would have considered bringing a baby into the ward.

Ron found it somewhat difficult to take in that he suddenly was an uncle, several times over. In his own, personal reckoning of time Fred had been dead for less than a day. As if that wasn't enough, there had been more bad news after he woke up.

Once Ron knew which year it was, Healer Pye refused to go into specifics and kept his distance until the Weasleys arrived. George got there first; he explained to Ron that his staff constantly kept an eye at the Floo at Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, on account of the mail orders. When the news that his brother finally had woken up came through, George was told straight away and almost Splinched himself in his haste to Apparate to St. Mungo's.

Seeing George with unfamiliar lines of sorrow and resignation on his face threw Ron, much worse than it had to wake up some seven years into an unknown future. After their instinctive embrace, their conversation had been stilted. Ron could sense that something was being kept from him as George told him about marrying Angelina, running the thriving shop, and becoming a father. With the old George, it would probably just have been his glass of water being laced with some experimental potion. With this grave stranger, Ron had a feeling something infinitely more serious was afoot.

When his mother arrived with Ginny in tow, full of tears of joy and exhortations to Ron not to strain himself, the news had finally been broken to him. Arthur Weasley had been hit with an Entrail-Expelling Curse from Antonin Dolohov and bled to death on the lawn at Hogwarts before any Healers could get to him.

Looking around the room, Ron could see the marks the years and grief had left on the faces of his family. The Weasleys were in a celebratory mood after he had been restored to them against all expectations, but he couldn't share it.

It seemed wrong to rejoice in new life, when all Ron could think about was that he never would see his father or brother again. Harry, who had been his brother too in every way that mattered, was also gone forever. Alone in the crowded room, Ron grieved for his losses amid the happy voices.

The unidentified curse that brought Ron down had hit him towards the end of the battle, after Harry had fallen. He had missed the damage inflicted during the last lethal minutes of the war. Later on, he would find out that Voldemort's forces had managed to kill Professor McGonagall and Kingsley Shacklebolt during their frantic last stand. Apparently, people said McGonagall never really recovered from being hit with three Stunners simultaneously a few years earlier, so she hadn't stood a chance when a Blasting Curse slipped under her guard.

When she arrived, his mother had told him firmly that this was a time for family. As darkness fell over London, Ron decided that enough time had passed to remember those who weren't family by blood.

He had no idea what she was doing now, but Ron couldn't imagine a world where Hermione Granger wouldn't come to his bedside on a day like this. At the very least she must have freed the house-elves by now, so she could hardly be that busy.

"Mum," he interrupted her inspection of his ghastly paleness, and how rubbish hospital food apparently made it worse.

"Yes, dearest?"

"Where's Hermione, anyway?" The din of chattering Weasleys, occasionally punctuated by a loud laugh or an intermittently wailing child, seemed to cease abruptly.

"I mean, she might be at work or- or married with kids, for all I know. She still lives in England, right?" Ron looked around the suddenly acutely uncomfortable faces of his family. "Right? She's not dead, right?" His voice was one octave higher than normal. Squeezing his eyes shut with the effort, he used all his might to command Hemione to be alive. Surely he was owed that much, at least.

* * *

The subsequent verbal explosion made Healer Pye frown disapprovingly over his cup of tea in the staff room. This was a hospital; the least his patients could do while they recovered was to show some respect. If they must needs hold shouting matches, they could do it somewhere else.

* * *

"I can't believe it! She did what she had to do, otherwise you'd all be dead now! You didn't even help her defending herself!" The children had hastily been removed from the room and Ron was free to rail against the perfidy of the adults.

"You've no idea what it was like, Ron!" his sister snapped. "When Harry fell," a shadow went across the room at the mention of their surrogate brother, honorary son, "no one could believe that Hermione killed him. Everything was so confused, and with Dad, and Fred- They took you to St. Mungo's, it was just chaos…" Bill put his arm around Ginny's shoulders, pulling her into a hug sideways.

"The Aurors took Hermione away, and we didn't really see her again until the trial." Bill continued the story in a transparent attempt to defuse the situation. It was what he did; apparently it was no different now from when they were children and their bickering almost gave their mum a nervous breakdown over the summer holidays.

"And then what? No one listened to her, and they just decided to banish her and take her magic away?" Ron asked angrily.

"Pretty much." Bill held up his hand, to stop Ron from interjecting. "The Wizengamot was very lenient actually, because of everything she'd done in the war and because she was so young. She killed Harry in cold blood, you know. The only explanation she had was some cock and bull story about Voldemort's soul being stuck in Harry."

"She said she had to kill him, that he'd _asked_ her to do it. As if Harry ever would have done that!" There was something sharp and unforgiving in Ginny's voice that Ron never had heard from her before. "She was lucky to be banished, she should have been given the Kiss!"

Their mum looked like she had heard the same argument a hundred times before. Maybe she had.

"Ginny, love..." she said pleadingly. Ginny stopped talking and angrily folded her arms across her chest.

"I think the battle was just too much for her, poor dear. She must have become unhinged, that's why she did what she did. It's better the way it is. Hermione can't hurt anyone, but she's not locked up in Azkaban either," their mum continued.

"Anyone else?" Ron laid down the challenge, looking around the room. His siblings turned their eyes away from him when his gaze came to rest upon them. "Percy? Don't you want to say something too? You never used to be shy about sharing your opinion."

Percy squared his shoulders and turned his head back to face Ron. In that moment, he looked so much like his father that Ron almost believed it all had been one of Fred and George's pranks. Look, we're all alive! Did you really think Fred met his end at Hogwarts? Did you believe that Dad died at the very last moment after surviving two whole wars? We really had you going there for a while, ickle Ronniekins…

"Look Ron, of course you don't want to face up to it. She was your best friend, for heaven's sake. She killed your other best friend though, after he'd just vanquished You-Know-Who. What did you expect us to do, congratulate her?" Patronising and self-justifying; this was definitely Percy.

"I expected you to bloody listen to her!"

"What for? She's clearly cracked!" George entered the fray. "She was trying to justify it, making up all those stories about why she'd done it," he said with contempt, "We had to listen to her in court, all day. If you ask me, she got off lightly!"

"Don't you get it?" Ron roared. "If Harry hadn't been killed, Voldemort would've won. Before the fight Harry begged us to promise that we'd kill him, after he had killed Voldemort. We knew, all three of us knew. The only way to stop Voldemort for good was to bring Harry down too."

He looked around at his dumbstruck family before continuing with the most shameful part, the bit he would always regret.

"And the worst thing is that Hermione had to do it, because I couldn't bring myself to it. Harry was really worried about what would happen to her afterwards, even when he was bloody preparing himself to die. He knew how people can turn on you," Ron wasn't sure, but he though Bill bowed his head in shame, "and we both knew she'd no one to back her with Harry gone, except our family. And we failed her."

The room fell quiet for a heartbeat, before Ginny got stuck back into it.

"I don't care! She killed Harry, whatever you say to justify it! How do you know she was even telling the truth? She could've made it up!"

"Ginny, I talked to Harry about it before he died. It was Harry who put it all together, when he realised that the last Horcrux was his scar. Hermione was going to have to kill him after he had killed Voldemort, and then I would explain why she did it. But then Macnair caught me with that curse…"

And so Hermione has been left to fend for herself for the last seven years, Ron thought, after she had to kill Harry. What had become of her?


	5. Chapter 4 - Rising From The Ashes

**As always, many thanks to MysticDew for all her help and advice!**

* * *

**Chapter 4  
**

******Rising From The Ashes**

**-oOo-**

**10AM, the 27th of February 2005 – The Ministry of Magic, London**

Hermione stopped and stared. She could hardly believe her eyes. So this was what they had replaced Voldemort's homage to the might of magic with; this travesty of her friend!

A statue of Harry, with a ponderous expression and protruding muscles he never could have dreamt of acquiring in real life, dominated the Atrium. He had no scar, she noticed, and the sculptor had obviously tried to de-emphasise his glasses in his efforts to bring what could best be described as Stalinist propaganda chic to wizarding art.

She felt nauseous. She was afraid she was going to collapse on the floor in hysterical laughter, imagining what Harry would have said about this. So this was what she was dealing with! The hypocrites weren't content with stepping all over what Harry had believed in, they were even using the Boy-Who-Died to justify what they were doing.

Well, Hermione Granger was back and she was damned if she was going to let them get away with it any longer.

"Right. Let's get a move on, shall we?" she said, taking a deep breath and adjusting her name badge for want of some loins to gird.

The badge read "Jean Taylor (formerly Hermione Granger), Attending Hearing". Hermione had been surprised that it didn't say "Revolutionary In Training" or "Intent On Revenge", but maybe the magic used to create the descriptions didn't work on her now that she was about as magical as an electric blanket.

The witch who had been assigned to bring her down to Courtroom Eight had stopped when Hermione did. Now, they both resumed their path towards the elevators.

The Atrium was curiously empty; compared to the last time Hermione was here during Voldemort's reign, it seemed to have been deserted completely by the usually steady traffic of Ministry employees and visitors. It hadn't escaped her notice that she had been called in on a Sunday, presumably to keep the review of her case as discreet as possible. It probably explained the unusually oblique name tag too.

Ever since she had found Malfoy waiting for her in her apartment four weeks ago, Hermione had been in a state of suspended animation. There was absolutely nothing she could do about it, other than going about her business as if nothing had happened and her main concern still was whether to get her gas boiler replaced. She alternated between fearing that she had dreamt everything, wanting to choke Malfoy for blackmailing her, and almost tasting the sensation of having her magic again.

Since their first meeting she had met him twice again.

Together, they went to the unprepossessing registry office in Peckham Road to give notice to get married. The process involved having their names on public display for fifteen days, in case anyone would raise any objections. Unlike most weddings, Hermione imagined there were plenty of people who would try to stop them, had they had any idea of what was going on.

Malfoy had cast a Notice-Me-Not charm on their names, to prevent anyone with wizarding connections from seeing the upcoming union of Draco Abraxas Malfoy and Jean Taylor being announced. When Hermione scoffed at how inadequate a simple concealment charm would be in deterring anyone with more than a passing interest in their doings, Malfoy testily informed her that he deemed the security arrangements more than sufficient. However, he refused to make her privy to what they consisted of. Hermione suspected that the staff would swiftly be Obliviated, once they were legally married. No doubt he had other methods of concealment up his sleeve, too.

When she was banished, Hermione had been forced to change her name as well as surrendering her wand. At the time, she had picked her middle name and her mother's maiden name without further ado. There were so many other things to be angry about.

Afterwards, when she had time to think about it, she had been furious.

They didn't even let her keep her own name! It may have been too distinctive to keep her safe from wizards looking for revenge, but it should have been Hermione's decision and no one else's. Now, she was faintly relieved not to see her real name on the forms. It made the situation seem more bearable, as if it was happening to someone else.

Ever since Malfoy had turned up in her apartment, Hermione had been debating the wisdom of agreeing to his deal. How could she possibly justify aiding the Malfoys to rise to prominence again, allowing them to attempt to subjugate another generation of Muggle-borns? Even if she would give anything to bring Ron back into the waking world, it didn't mean that she had the right to inflict the Malfoys on the wizarding world in return. However much she thought they deserved it.

By agreeing to Malfoy's terms, she was condoning whatever he would do next; she shuddered to consider the consequences if he turned out to be anything like his father.

Hermione told herself that she should tell Malfoy to bugger off and not bother her again, or find a way of reporting him to the Ministry without implicating herself, but she didn't do anything. She hadn't been able to save Harry, or Remus or Fred or Colin Creevey or anyone else who had died in the war, or get her parents back, but maybe she could atone for it by saving Ron.

Once she had her magic back, she would find a way to bring Malfoy to heel.

The second time they met again had been for their actual wedding. It had been a very quiet affair. Malfoy wore a transfigured suit (she was surprised he even knew what a Muggle suit looked like), and Hermione was dressed in her work gear, a smart grey jacket and skirt. The outfit conveyed all the joy and pleasure she felt at the occasion; the last time she wore it, she had to fire the head receptionist for taking bribes from taxi drivers. It seemed appropriate.

If Hermione had been in a more receptive state of mind, she would have cringed at the suspicious looks they received. Turning up without a wedding dress, witnesses or even a smile was indeed odd; she suspected the only reason they were allowed to get married without questioning, was because they were both British citizens. Otherwise, they probably would have been carted off for immigration fraud before the beady-eyed official even started the ceremony.

"Jean Taylor, I give you this ring, as a token of my love, and a symbol of our marriage. I vow to be loving, faithful and loyal to you, throughout our lives together," Malfoy said without a trace of insincerity in his voice, slipping a plain silver ring on her finger.

He was a great actor; she would have to remember that. Hermione stared at the ring, willing herself to believe that this actually was happening. When it was her turn she repeated after the registrar:

"With this ring, I thee wed, and with it, I bestow upon thee all that I have to offer," thinking that it was very little indeed. Malfoy must be fairly certain things were going to unfold the way he had planned to stake everything on her acquittal.

"Draco Abraxas Malfoy, I take you to be my husband. I promise to love you, honour and respect you." It was impossible not to look at him as she was pledging her loyalty to him, not to acknowledge what they once were and how improbable it was that they would end up here together.

Malfoy's face was utterly serious as Hermione continued. "I will stand by you and be true to you always. I give you this ring as a symbol of my love and faithfulness, and I ask you to wear it as a reminder of the vows we have spoken today. Whatever life may bring I will always love you."

She closed her eyes briefly after finishing the vows, the ghosts of what should have been overpowering her for a moment.

When Hermione was growing up, it never occurred to her to put her books or scientific experiments down to play wedding instead. Once she got older, she dreamt of other things. For a very short while, before she had put everything other than hunting for Horcruxes aside, she had seen a clear path to the future just before it was snatched away. It had hinted of love and companionship and a life shared, and it hurt to finally let it go, even if she had let all hopes of Ron slip away years ago.

And what about her new husband? His parents had always seemed to be well matched, if not loving; Malfoy must have hoped for a wife he would actually get along with, rather than the know-it-all best friend of his schoolboy nemesis. His indifference about the whole arrangement unnerved her. Hermione had been used to over-reactions, tantrums and passionate outbursts, not this calm acceptance which only served to emphasise how far ahead of her he was.

It had quickly become evident that he had been planning this for a long time.

When they had met to register notice of their marriage, Hermione had brought up the issue of children once more. Surely he would want an heir to the Malfoy line, or all this talk of restoration would be an exercise in futility?

Before Voldemort, pure-blood families had planned for centuries rather than decades, plotting how to extend their standing and influence in the wizarding world. The two civil wars had decimated their numbers and forced them to focus on their immediate survival, rather than long-term strategic objectives. However, from what Hermione had seen of this new Draco Malfoy, he was unlikely not to have considered the implications for his potential heirs before marrying a Muggle-born.

Hermione had sworn to herself that she never would have children with Malfoy, no matter what he offered her or threatened her with. That way, she could bring it up as an academic consideration rather than another thing that needed to be settled, like where she would live or how the Unbreakable Vow should be worded. The pile of things she would rather not consider, but that would have to be settled very soon, was growing at a frightening rate.

"I believe adoption will be perfectly adequate. It was considered eminently suitable by our Roman ancestors, after all," Malfoy informed her as they walked past the football pitch in Burgess Park, near Hermione's apartment. He had flat out refused to go on the Tube, and after some hesitation she had agreed to walk to the register office. They had some matters to settle, and being on neutral ground might be conducive to success. Besides, she could do with the fresh air – she hadn't seen any daylight since the weekend.

Naturally, Hermione was well aware that Julius Caesar had adopted Octavian as his successor, and that adoption had been common among the patrician families in ancient Rome to ensure the continued existence of family lines that otherwise would have fallen barren.

However, she had not expected to find the same customs pertaining among Britain's pure-blood aristocrats two millennia later. It turned out that the Malfoys were direct descendants of a Roman patrician family, the Postumia, by way of France. Draco Malfoy could comfortably name several of his ancestors who had debated with Cicero or run afoul of Marc Antony. Sensing her interest, he apparently decided to reel her in:

"In the library at Malfoy Manor, there are documents dating back to people who knew Gaius Julius personally. Such a shame the Ministry got hold of them now, isn't it?" he said blandly.

Damn it, Hermione thought, as she was forced to admit that there actually seemed to be some advantages to becoming a Malfoy. She had forgotten all about their library. Even though she had known she was unlikely to ever set foot in it, she had read about it at Hogwarts and envied Malfoy for having something like that at his disposal. Imagine the research she could undertake, with those resources at her fingertips…

For the first time, she actually felt a modicum of enthusiasm for their joint mission to restore the Malfoys to their position at the pinnacle of wizarding society.

* * *

Hermione wrenched her thoughts back to the present as she descended into the bowels of the Ministry with her escort. Once, she had dreamt about working here, selflessly improving the world for wizards, Muggles and magical beings alike. Now, she was in the pocket of Draco Malfoy and anathema to decent witches and wizards.

For the first time, she wondered where she would end up after the next roll of the dice. Her banishment to the Muggle world had seemed so final that she never had imagined that she would return. Yet, here she was; it was a strange feeling, tasting your old dreams again after they had turned into ashes.

The hearing was short and nothing like what she had expected. It was certainly the exact opposite of her trial all those years ago.

Instead of the formal Courtroom Ten with its benches for the Wizengamot and the chair of the accused in the middle, Hermione was taken to something looking rather like a Muggle conference room. An inoffensive view of a desolate beach in bleak daylight was visible through an enchanted window, behind the five wizards and witches that sat facing her as she entered. Her escort had abandoned her at the door, and Hermione found herself facing the Ministry alone. Again.

"Miss Granger. Thank you for coming here today," a fat wizard clad in the purple robes of the Wizengamot said pompously. He looked ridiculously out of place next to the neutral birch office chairs with their tasteful monochrome covers.

"It's Ms Taylor, actually" she corrected him. She failed to see that she owed them any deference.

"Ah, yes. Yes, yes, I believe I indeed saw that mentioned somewhere-" he stammered, as he flicked through his stack of parchments and Hermione realised that he was flustered. It made her sit up straighter in her chair, trying for intimidation. It was probably fruitless when you were only five foot five, but nevertheless worthy of the attempt.

"Miss Taylor." Apparently, he had found the correct piece of parchment and regained some of his confidence. She let the 'miss' slip for the moment.

"I'm Otho Holborne, and I've been tasked with" (management newspeak had apparently reached the wizarding world, Hermione thought, cringing inwardly. She knew task technically was a verb, too, but that did nothing to diminish the withering scorn she felt against anyone who used it as such) "managing your, ah- restitution. These ladies and gentlemen," he gesticulated to the people next to him, "are also heavily involved in the project, and each have their allocated area of responsibility." He looked expectantly at the thin, scraggly witch furthest to Hermione's left. The witch nodded impatiently and offered:

"Vesta Peterson, MLE." Seeing Hermione's raised eyebrow, she added "Department of Magical Law Enforcement," looking rather surprised at having to explain herself further.

The wizard next to Peterson introduced himself as Barry McBrody, from the Department of International Magical Cooperation. He turned out to be a rather enthusiastic chap and started to explain his presence by mentioning "The substantial international interest in-" but was swiftly cut off with a look from Holborne.

On the other side of him sat a forbidding-looking Wizengamot member named Selim Atalay, who seemed considerably more senior than Holborne. Atalay graced Hermione with a long, hard look and said as little as possible. To the far right sat an anonymous-looking Court Scribe who didn't volunteer his name; Hermione was startled to realise that this was a formal hearing despite its deceptive informality.

"Not to worry, just have to get it all nice and official!" Holborne's attempt at joviality to set her at ease fell flat in the face of Hermione's stony stare.

"Right," he muttered, shuffling the parchments in his hands and trying to get back into his stride. "Now, Miss Gra- Taylor, the Wizengamot has decided that there's no reason to drag you through another trial, so that's why we've asked you to come in here today."

Hermione noticed that his hands were shaking slightly. Apart from the obvious, it had just occurred to her that the Ministry had good reason to be nervous. In the Muggle world she could have sued the Crown for hundreds of thousands of pounds for wrongful conviction. She had no idea what the law in the wizarding world was, but resolved to find out as soon as possible. Add to that the inevitable storm of publicity, and the Ministry had a rough time ahead. No doubt Malfoy was poised to take as much advantage of it as he could.

"And why have I come here today?" she asked pointedly. There was a moment's silence among the bureaucrats, and then Atalay answered in his deep, official-sounding voice.

"Upon receipt of additional evidence in the form of Pensieve memories and written affidavits, the Wizengamot has reviewed your case and quashed your conviction. It has found that you acted upon the request of the deceased, who was of sound mind when declaring his wishes."

Atalay cleared his throat. The sound rang out loud in the conference room that had fallen completely silent, as they all waited for him to continue.

"The Wizengamot duly noted that a piece of Tom Riddle's, formerly known as Lord Voldemort, soul was contained in the body of the deceased Harry Potter as you committed the act of killing him, effectively rendering your actions a prerequisite for the defeat of said Tom Riddle. As this was a rightful act in defence of the realm, any murder charges brought in relation to it are null and void." The scribe furiously moved his quill, trying to get it all down.

Hermione tried to shake off the feeling that this couldn't possibly be real. Her memories of the act, jagged pieces of despair and frantic hurry, bore no relation to the dry words she had just heard and she couldn't connect the two in her mind.

Fortunately, there was no need for her to say anything; Holborne was quite ready to step into the breach.

"As you heard, Miss Gra- Taylor, your name has been cleared and all sanctions will be repealed. I-"

"And when will that be?" Hermione interrupted.

"Two members of the Department of Mysteries are waiting for you. Once this meeting is over they'll release your magic again," Vesta Peterson broke in, to Holborne's displeasure.

"Yes, quite, yes," he mumbled, trying once again to find his thread. "Yes, indeed, Miss Taylor, you are now free to visit magical locations and use your magic just like any wizard – or witch – that is of age!" he expanded, looking for all the world like a benevolent uncle.

"Splendid," Hermione said sarcastically, which earned her another sharp look from Atalay and further prattling from a clearly oblivious Holborne.

"The, ah, press is aware that something is afoot, so we would like to advise you to expect some attention from the Fourth Estate once the news are released in the next few days. Screening your owls, that sort of thing…" Suddenly Hermione couldn't wait to be out of their presence. Holborne was indubitably a fool, but she wouldn't trust any of the rest of them an inch.

"Is that all?" Her voice was cold and clear. Holborne started fumbling with his parchments again, and pulled out several official-looking documents and laid them before her. He pushed his quill over to her side of the table, and indicated with his chubby fingers:

"If you would be so good as to sign here… and here…"

Hermione almost snorted. How stupid did they think she was?

"No."

"Begging your pardon, what?" Holborne blubbered.

"I've no intention of signing anything without legal representation."

Vesta Peterson pulled herself up to her full height; she had a few inches on Hermione.

"Then I'm afraid you won't be walking out of here as a free woman, Ms Taylor." Hermione stretched her spine as much as she could, trying to look taller.

"Then I assume you'll have no problem explaining to _The Daily Prophet_ why I'm still subject to punishment for a crime I did, in fact, not commit?" she asked archly. Glances were exchanged between Peterson, Atalay and Holborne, and the offending paperwork was quickly removed.

Well, there was no time like the present, Hermione thought, before putting on her best professional smile. It was the same smile she had used when she got a full refund of the recruitment agency fees, after their new head chef was found dealing drugs from the car park in the basement.

"Let me make one thing clear: if there's any attempt from the Ministry's side to victimise me in the future, or supervise my activities, I'll hold all of you personally responsible," she said, making sure to rest her gaze first on Peterson, then Atalay and finally on the increasingly twitchy Holborne. "I'm sure _The Daily Prophet_ will be interested in an interview, should I approach them. Is that understood, Mr– Holcombe, was it?"

Before she was asked to step into an adjoining meeting room to meet the officials from the Department of Mysteries, Hermione thought she caught a whispered "Attagirl!" from Atalay. It must have been her imagination. She didn't fool herself into thinking her threat would make much of a difference, but at least it might give Holborne a sleepless night or two.

Only half an hour later, she found herself jostled by the lunchtime crowd back on the windswept streets of Muggle London. After the two nameless wizards from the Department of Mysteries had taken her aside, she had been completely at a loss to what was actually going on.

They had instructed her to stand still, and proceeded to largely ignore her while weaving a cloud of magic around her. She had been aching to embrace it, lose herself in it, when it suddenly felt as if it entered every fibre of her being and sunk into her bones.

Suddenly it seemed like a shell had cracked open, and she broke free of restraints she hadn't even noticed were there. The air was crackling with magic and Hermione was vaguely aware of the officials diving for cover.

Shortly afterwards they emerged, as the burst of energy settled down. They ran a string of diagnostic tests to ensure everything was in order, and in what seemed an impossibly short space of time Hermione was escorted back through the Atrium and emerged at street level again.

She was simultaneously feeling better than she had since she was hunting Horcruxes, and impossibly lost. She didn't know what to do. Without a wand, her magic wasn't much use. She didn't trust herself using it without a conduit, still leery of the sheer energy she could feel whenever she concentrated.

There was no one to tell, no one to phone with her news. She had no idea what her reputation in wizarding world was currently, and she was disinclined to loiter outside the Leaky Cauldron hoping for the best, however much she was aching to finally be able to do something.

Deflated, Hermione went home to Bermondsey Street, and sent two notes; one to Malfoy and one to Ron. She decided vindication wasn't really all it was cracked up to be, and settled down to do some more waiting.


	6. Chapter 5 - The Streets We Used To Know

**Thanks to MysticDew, as always!**

* * *

**Chapter 5**

**The Streets We Used To Know**

**-oOo-**

**11AM, the 3rd of March, 2005 - King's Cross Station, London**

King's Cross Station was the only Muggle place Hermione could think of that Ron definitely would be able to find, so that was where she was waiting for him, at platform six.

Before her hearing, she had received a letter with the address carefully written by hand. She knew the handwriting almost as well as she knew her own. The shock of seeing the familiar looped g's and l's and realising that Ron had braved the Muggle post for her made Hermione's legs wobble, and she steadied herself against the wall in her apartment, clutching the envelope.

Before opening the letter, she took a moment to savour the fact that Ron had written to her. There was no guarantee it was anything other than a brief communication to sever all bonds with her; no guarantee at all.

_Hermione, _

_I'm so sorry about everything, – _she started breathing again_ – I only woke up in St. Mungo's a few days ago and had a fit when they told me what happened to you. I guess you know I was knocked out in the battle. It's like I've been asleep for seven years, just like in the fairy tales. It sounds a bit stupid when you write it down, really. _

_Please forgive me, Hermione, I'm trying to put everything to rights now. I'm not allowed to say anything, but I swear everything will be better very soon. _

_Angelina helped send this the Muggle way, did you know she's married to George now? She's dead handy with the Muggle post and those stamp yokes anyway. _

_If you want you can send a reply to Angelina's gran, she's Muggle. _

_Please, please at least tell me if you're OK. I can't come and see you right now, but we could meet up soon if you wait just a little longer. I understand if you don't want to, but please, Hermione, I just want to see you. _

_Love_

_Ron_

His handwriting got more incoherent towards the end, she noticed absent-mindedly as her back slipped down the wall and she ended up sitting on the floor. Oh, Ron…

Hermione shook with sobs, as she cried with relief that he was awake and still himself. She cried for everything they had lost, for everything they could have been but that she had to sell to Malfoy in exchange for his freedom, and she cried for the memory of their single kiss and the two gangly teenagers who had been betrayed by Voldemort before they even had a chance.

She replied to his letter the same day, setting his fears that she would refuse to meet him at ease, and agreeing to contact him after the mysterious events he referred to occurred. The summons from the Ministry had arrived a few days later. She sent Ron a second letter with the news of her reprieve, and suggested that they would meet at King's Cross when he had been released from St. Mungo's. The previous day he had replied by owl, informing her that he didn't give a toss about what the Healers said and would she meet him today?

Now, Hermione was waiting for him anxiously, breathing warm air into her mittens in a futile effort to keep her hands warm in the cold March air. She really did have to get a wand as soon as possible.

Despite her nervousness, having to wait didn't alarm her. As always, she was early and Ron was running late. Maybe they could find each other again through these little constancies; all the things they knew about each other, after spending so much time together growing up. Maybe-

Her train of thought was cut off as she was enveloped in a tight hug, lifted up in the air and swung around with her legs flying awkwardly.

"Hermione!" a tall, bearded stranger said in Ron's voice. She managed to find her breath again and looked up, straight into his brilliant blue eyes.

"Oh, Ron!" She hugged him back, and he set her down, still keeping her wrapped her in his arms. It felt warm and safe and like everything she had missed.

* * *

"It took you so long, I thought I had the wrong person there for a minute!" Ron joked, trying to hide his surprise at finding a woman with dark circles under her eyes and worry lines edged into her face in the place of the girl he remembered. Then she smiled, and his Hermione shone through from the inside.

"Serves you right for attacking strangers like that!" she told him.

Not wanting to hang around in case they bumped into someone they knew who had business at platform nine and three-quarters, they left King's Cross. For want of somewhere better, Hermione brought Ron to Starbucks on Euston Road. They were both a bit hesitant, after the initial joy of seeing each other again.

Ron was cursing his bad luck. He hadn't been able to do what he'd promised, and it was Hermione who had suffered for it. She seemed skittish and wary, uncertain of her welcome, and he felt entirely unable to bridge the distance between them.

He felt his eighteen years in his every move. Ron might look like a grown-up now, but he certainly didn't feel like one.

Hermione had always been more mature than him in the first place, and now she had another seven years on him. It didn't help that he knew he always had been rubbish at this sort of thing; her dig about him having the emotional range of a teaspoon hadn't really been as unfair as he made it out to be.

When they got their mugs and sat down, Ron surreptitiously cast a Muffliato around them, correctly assuming that Hermione hadn't had time to get accustomed to use magic again. She cast him a grateful look and he took heart from that; at least he could do something right.

"How's your family?" Hermione asked as soon as she got a chance. Then she seemed to realise that it could be an awkward question, and looked like she wanted to take it back again.

"Well, you know… " Ron started and drifted off again. He had no idea where to start. "D'you know what happened towards the end of the battle?" She nodded, and he remembered reading in the paper that she had been told every single gory detail during her confinement, to encourage her to confess.

"So then you can imagine what it's like at home." He slumped in his chair; it felt out of place in this broad-shouldered body, but he was starting to get used to it. With Hermione next to him, he could have been sitting at the Gryffindor table at Hogwarts again, giving out about Snape. This time, she probably wouldn't even tell him off for bad-mouthing Snape, for once.

"See, they've all had loads of time to get used to it, but it's all new to me. They're really happy to have me back, but they've got their own lives too, and it's hard to fit in..." Ron tried to put words on what it was like to be seven years behind. "George has got kids now, can you imagine? Just wait until they get old enough to go to Hogwarts, I'll tell them all about what Fred and George used to get up to…" He trailed off, refusing to meet her gaze. Hermione squeezed his hand gently.

"It's OK, Ron. That's exactly the way he would have wanted it to be, believe me. You shouldn't feel ashamed to talk about him."

"Mum just wells up if you mention Fred or Dad, and then she looks sad all day. I just want to talk about them, you know? I hardly know what they did during the war after I saw them at Christmas, and no one wants to talk about it. It's all about how happy they are that I've woken up, and there's this or that I have to see, and did you know they've rebuilt the whole entrance at Gringotts?"

"No."

"Exactly, and I couldn't give a monkey's about it either." He ceased his grumbling and they fell silent for a minute, revelling in the sudden feeling of rightness of this, of being together. It was just like in the old days, when they wandered off for some chips down in the village, some long-forgotten summer afternoon when Harry still was at the Dursleys' and it was just the two of them.

The moment passed, and Ron cursed himself for hammering on about his own petty problems as usual. Hermione happened to glance at him just then, and looked concerned as he blushed an ugly red in his discomfort. He gathered himself, determined that he wouldn't make a mess of it this time.

"Hermione, I'm really sorry about what happened after Harry died." They hadn't even mentioned Harry before. In the minefield of subjects open to them, this was one they both had no particular wish to face up to just yet. "We should have sorted things out better, made sure someone else knew what was going on- I was so sure my family would speak for you if anything happened to me, I just couldn't imagine-"

"Ron, there was no time. There's nothing to apologise for. Nothing." She grabbed both his hands to make him believe her. "You did everything you could have done. There's no way any of us could have known you'd be knocked out like that."

"But my family-"

"They're not you, are they? You're only responsible for yourself, not for every other Weasley in existence."

Picking her words with care, Hermione continued:

"Your family has the right to have their own opinion on what happened. I did kill Harry." Ron would have spoken, but the way she shrunk at the words stopped him. Her voice was still steady and clear, but for a moment she looked almost like an old woman, weary with loneliness and grief. "You know why I did it; that doesn't mean anyone else has to agree with me or condone it."

"They didn't even listen to you! You'd just made sure Voldemort was gone forever, and they wouldn't even hear what you had to say!"

"They were grieving, Ron. And you know Harry was like a son for them too."

"And you should have been like-like Ginny!" She smiled at that: a faint, weary smile. Ron realised that she wouldn't be convinced any time soon, and gave up the attempt for the moment. The last time Hermione was at the Burrow was at Fleur and Bill's wedding, and the Weasleys had treated her like family then and for years before that. To Ron's stubborn heart, there was no reason for it to ever have changed.

"Anyway, you've been cleared by the Wizengamot now. Everyone knows why you really- what really happened, and still…" He drifted off, not wanting to burden Hermione with more mistrust, but she looked like she had been expecting it. Gods knew she had enough experience of Ron being pig-headed over the years, so she would hardly be surprised to find that his family was the same.

"Just tell me, Ron. It will make it less awkward if I know who I have to avoid. Honestly."

"It's Ginny, mostly."

"Oh, Ginny," Hermione whispered, and there was nothing else either of them could bear to say about his sister.

"And George." Ron continued doggedly, determined to get it over with even though Hermione looked like she just had been stabbed. He knew she always liked George best of the twins; regardless of how different their views on house-elves had been, they had share some of the same soft-heartedness. "Mum was pretty understanding, even when she still thought you'd gone bonkers under the pressure. She cried for days after she read your statement in _The_ _Prophet_. She's knitting you a jumper now, so I guess that means you're forgiven."

They both knew that a Weasley jumper was much more that a ball of yarn in colours that happened to be particularly unflattering to your complexion.

"Percy finally got it, too. Audrey said he locked himself into his study and refused to come out until he'd gone through all the statements from seven years ago. Then he Apparated straight home and told me I had to find you. As if I hadn't already!"

Ron suddenly recalled the existence of his older brothers too. "And Bill was great when I was in St. Mungo's. He sat Charlie down and got it through his thick head before they released me." He smiled. "They both say hello, by the way. They helped me to track you down, and Angelina helped as well. Well, you knew that."

"Yes, I did. You must thank her from me."

"I will."

There was a lull in the conversation, as none of them knew what to say next.

"How have you been, Hermione? I was so worried about you when they told me what happened, I hoped you were with your parents at least, but-" Seeing her face, Ron stopped that sentence immediately and Hermione took pity on him.

"I've been- I'm OK, I suppose. I got a job at a hotel after the first month, and I've been working in the same place since then. Now I'm the general manager!" The attempt to be perky fell flat on its face, but she continued undeterred. "I've got my own flat in London, near London Bridge in Bermondsey Street-" Ron looked lost; he didn't know much about the geography of London. "It's a really interesting area, and you can get the Tube anywhere you want." Hermione seemed to have run out of things to say and started picking at the packet of sugar she had picked up at the counter instead.

"Are you- did you meet anyone?" Ron asked, with some hesitation. He wasn't sure if he was ready to find out yet. To him, it was only a few weeks ago since they shared a kiss at Hogwarts, but he knew it wasn't like that for Hermione; how could it be?

"Ron, I work in a city centre hotel, I meet hundreds of- Oh." Hermione blushed, and Ron felt his stomach sink.

"Yes, Ron, I've had a few boyfriends, but nothing serious." Her face turned wry, as he looked at her in surprise. "Boyfriends tend to be curious to find things out about you, like what you're screaming about in your nightmares and why you didn't go to uni when you obviously have the brains, and where your family is, and I'm all out of answers." She grimaced. "Sorry, I didn't mean to hit you with all that, it's only that there has been no one who'd understand…" She glanced at Ron, and he tried his best to look mature and understanding. To his surprise, he didn't feel very jealous; just sad, mostly, as he thought about it.

"Same thing with friends, I assume. So it's been fairly crap for you then, has it?" he asked.

"Pretty much." He could tell that she didn't want to make him feel sorry for her, but it was the truth. If Hermione couldn't tell him the truth, there was really no hope for them. They sat silent for a little while.

"Oh, hang on." Ron finally remembered his tea bag, and fished it out of the by now murky orange liquid, and they both laughed. After that, the atmosphere became noticeably lighter.

"Ron, could you help me with something?" Hermione had seemed to be building up to something for the last few minutes and it was clear that she wasn't very comfortable asking him. She was looking down, so she missed the brief look of curiosity and pleasure flashing across Ron's face. It was so seldom Hermione ever needed his help, and he desperately wanted to make up for the last seven years somehow.

"I- They took my wand, or rather Bellatrix' wand, after the battle," she explained. "My magic has been unbound," Ron recognised the word from the interview with the Department official he read in _The Daily Prophet_, "but I need to get a new one, and you must have a wand to get to Diagon Alley-"

"I'll take you! We can go now, I'm not drinking this anyway." He gesticulated towards his mug and almost knocked his chair over in his haste to get there.

* * *

First Hermione tried to put him off, to buy herself a little more time to prepare to face the wizarding public, but Ron's infectious enthusiasm and her own eagerness to finally get her hands on a wand soon won her over. Not even the prospect of being shunned could deter her, once she realised that she might be able to do magic in a few short hours. What was a little public vilification compared to that?

Contrary to all expectations, they attracted very little attention as they snuck into Ollivander's. It helped that it was a miserable day, rain relentlessly beating down in the bitter wind. Hermione had rejected Ron's offer to disguise her appearance. She refused to act as if she was ashamed to be back.

As they walked in, an unfamiliar, lanky wizard with bright white hair that looked incongruous next to his youthful face, was polishing an ebony wand.

"Ah, Miss Granger," he said, sounding thoroughly unsurprised to see her. "We've been expecting you." Ron caught her eye and pointed to today's issue of _The Daily Prophet_ on the polished dark workbench. The wizard seemed decidedly less impressive when Hermione realised that she was on the front cover.

"We?" she asked. "Is Mr Ollivander still running the shop?"

"His health has been delicate since the war, but he still takes an interest and pops in now and then. In fact, if you don't mind," the wizard delicately put the wand down and put it into its box with reverence, "I'll fetch him, since he did want to attend to you himself. Would you mind waiting a few minutes?" he asked politely, and Hermione assured him that they didn't mind at all.

She had had an unwelcome realisation.

"Ron!" she whispered as soon as the white-haired wizard had disappeared through a door at the back of the room. "Do you have any wizarding money?" Looking around the diminutive shop that looked exactly as it had when she was eleven (only with more dust), she had realised that they hardly would accept her Muggle credit card. Ron looked panicked.

"Shite! Hermione, I've only got-" He emptied his pockets depressingly quickly, "-eight Galleons, three Sickles and eleven Knuts." The last Knut escaped, rolling all the way to the far end of the room, where it was picked up by a familiar figure. He looked a good bit more gaunt and had aged visibly, but there was no mistaking Mr Ollivander. Laboriously, he straightened himself up again and handed the wayward coin back to Ron.

"Here you are, Mr Weasley. I'm afraid your money is no good here, Miss Granger." Hermione opened her mouth to protest; was he refusing to serve her? With an expansive wave, Ollivander stalled her objections. "You helped me escape from Malfoy Manor during the war; there can be no question of payment. The wizarding world may forget its debts, Miss Granger, but I take pride in paying mine." She thought this over for a second; then she gracefully bowed her head. Since they last met, she had learnt much about debts and atonement.

"Then I thank you, Mr Ollivander."

Most of the afternoon went by in a haze of trying out different wands. Ron managed to last a whole two hours before succumbing to his stomach, and abandoned them to do a sandwich run. Hermione gratefully munched down a watercress and egg mayo sandwich, while trying yet another wand with her other hand.

Ollivander initially started her out with wands with a dragon heart string core, like her old wand (and Bellatrix', he reminded her), but the results were less than stellar. Regardless of the acrid smoke she generated when trying out a particularly ill-fitting wand, the thrill of using magic made Hermione fill up to the brim with excitement. Soon she looked more like her eleven-year-old self than the unremarkable, reserved woman that had entered the shop.

When Hermione finally held a wand that seemed to show some promise, she could almost have levitated off the floor. Effortlessly lifting the empty sandwich wrappers and elegantly deposing of them in the bin, before conjuring a beautiful bouquet of lilies and Transfiguring Ron's stray Knut into a candelabra, she laughed in delight and impulsively hugged Ron who looked equally happy.

Mr Ollivander's pensive expression brought her back down to earth.

"What?" she asked, a little more sharply than she had intended. Ollivander appeared to recall himself to the present, and pursed his lips.

"That wand has a very rare core. There has only ever been four wands sharing it; two of those have been destroyed, and the other two are in this room." Hermione had a sense of foreboding ever since she saw Ollivander's preoccupied expression, and she inwardly cursed his tendency for dramatics. Would he ever just spit it out?

"The core is phoenix feather-"

"No," Hermione whispered. Her face felt frozen, and Ron looked at her uncomprehendingly.

"-from the late Professor Dumbledore's familiar, the renowned Fawkes. Two more feathers for wands came from his tail, since the last time you visited these premises." Ron had clearly also remembered what Harry's wand had been made of, and who else had a wand with a core from the tail of the same bird. He looked as if he was going to be sick.

"Don't be alarmed, my dear," Ollivander said, attempting to be reassuring. It sat awkwardly on his angular frame, which seemed more suitable for unnerving his customers. "The formative experiences of your life are intimately linked with the two wizards who shared this core, are they not?"

"Yes." Disagreeing with that statement would have been an exercise in futility.

"Then it's not alarming or strange that this wand should choose you, is it?"

Suddenly, Hermione realised that there was a very real risk that she never would be able to escape her past; regardless of what else she did in her life, everything that would ever matter was what she had done when she was eighteen.

"And if I choose another wand?" she asked, raising her chin in anticipation of his reaction.

"That would certainly be possible, but I couldn't recommend it; really, I couldn't…" Mr Ollivander spread his hands in supplication. "Without a doubt, any other wand would provide an inferior match, since it wouldn't be as attuned to your magic. I could equip you with something that would be sufficient for everyday use, but when it comes to complicated magic…" He shrugged. "In my experience, once a wand claims you, there really is no substitute."

Hermione could have screamed in frustration. Instead, she took a deep breath, bunching the hand not holding the wand into a tight fist, feeling her nails digging into her palm.

"Then I will accept this wand. If you offer it to me."

Afterwards, after she had said goodbye to Ron, promising to meet him again in the next few days to test her Apparition skills in a relatively safe environment to avoid Splinching herself, she carefully set her new wand down on her kitchen table.

It sat there as she made dinner, the polished rowan wood carrying both a threat and a promise. As she was eating her Bolognese, half-listening to 'Questions and Answers' with its tedious argument about public schools and elitism on the telly, Hermione could feel the power radiating from the wand. It was beckoning her, to come and take back what was hers.

-oOo-


	7. Chapter 6 - For The Greater Good

**Thanks to MysticDew for all her work on this chapter! Thanks also to sightlysmall, who pointed out an embarrassing error in the previous chapter so I could fix it :)  
**

* * *

**Chapter 6**

**For The Greater Good**

**-oOo-**

**12PM, the 13****th**** of March 2005 - Flat 11, 251 Bermondsey Street, London**

As soon as the news about Granger's acquittal had been released Draco went to work, monitoring the press coverage. He had made sure that a Floo connection was set up in her flat in advance, heavily warded of course, so he didn't have to play cloak and daggers with the Ministry if they needed to meet.

Naturally, Draco had envisaged how the story would be received ever since he figured out what really happened in the Battle of Hogwarts. However, reality vastly exceeded his expectations. Hermione had fortunately managed to look suitably noble and stoically suffering when attending the Ministry for her hearing, so the only recent picture of her, which was reproduced endlessly, was eminently suited to the dramaturgy of the story.

The public could never resist a sob story, and this was as melodramatic as it got. The darling of the wizarding world nobly sacrificing herself and her best friend to eradicate Voldemort, suffering in silence until her erstwhile paramour woke up from his seven year sleep (_The Prophet_ seldom let accuracy stand in the way of a good story; fudging dates was a rather mild offence in comparison). It would keep the press writing tripe for years.

The headlines ran the gamut from the contrived:

_From Hogwarts to Hell and Back Again _and _The-Girl-Who-Cried_

to the bare bones of the story:

_Granger Acquittal – Last Fragment of You-Know-Who Was Killed With Harry, Witness Says _

_I Knew Hermione Was Innocent – Longbottom Tells It All_

Draco couldn't have written them better himself.

The wizarding world couldn't get enough of their precious Miss Granger. Draco suspected that many people still harboured latent feelings of guilt for not doing anything in the war except duck and hide, and now supporting 'their' Hermione made them feel as if they had been fighting on her side, in a way. Notwithstanding the fact that they had been perfectly happy to send her into exile six and a half years ago and hadn't thought of her much since.

Draco, for one, applauded the wizarding public's short attention span and tendency towards self-delusions. It made his work much easier. For the moment, he wasn't worried about the public; it was another component of his convoluted plans that was giving him cause for concern.

* * *

As soon as she had a wand again, Hermione threw herself into a frenzy of activity that made even her half-forgotten O.W.L. preparations pale in comparison.

Unsurprisingly, the first order of the day was to erect wards around her apartment. She had cast them so many times around Mr Perkins's old tent during their time on the run that she half expected the familiar incantations to come out the way they used to, almost without conscious effort, like the previous seven years had been a short intermission.

It turned out that magic, unfortunately, in fact was very different to riding a bicycle. It most certainly did not come back to you effortlessly, after years of not practising it.

"Protego totalum!" Hermione barked, to no avail. She was certain that you were supposed to tilt your wand ever so slightly before flicking it, but she just couldn't do it right. These wards wouldn't even keep a Pugmy Puff out, and she kicked the wall viciously in frustration.

Ever since it had been unbound by the Ministry wizards she could feel her magic fizzing inside her, but Hermione just couldn't summon enough skill to translate it into spells. Unwillingly admitting to herself that she may have started out too ambitiously, she took a deep breath and sat down. Focusing all her attention on her electricity bill in front of her, she straightened her back and pushed her sleeves out of the way.

"Wingardium Leviosa!"

Grudgingly at first, the piece of paper lifted from the table and obediently stayed in the air, and something inside Hermione unclenched. As she got more confident, the bill followed the direction of her wand and on a whim she started playing with it, letting it soar around the room with a wide smile across her face. Eventually, she remembered that she was a grown-up witch, and rather shamefacedly let the sheet of paper flutter down again.

So she would have to start from the beginning again: that could be managed. It was lucky that she was so happy to have Ron back that she didn't even resent the fact that he didn't have to go through all this. To him, it was only a few weeks ago he last used magic, fighting for his life to boot. For the first time in their lives, what came naturally to Ron was a struggle for Hermione.

* * *

"Hermione!" Ron stumbled through her fireplace, banging his knee on the table in front of the couch and almost knocking over a motley collection of cups of cold tea. Fortunately, all of them stayed upright; the sickly-looking film of greenish milk floating in them would quite have ruined the carpet.

"What the hell are you doing?" he demanded.

Hermione jerked awake; she had fallen asleep over _A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration_, with Grade 3 and 4 of _The Standard Book of Spells_ and Waffling's _Magical Theory_ in a pile on her lap.

"What does it look like?" she croaked, pushing the books aside and reached for her hair clip which had slipped out while she slept; sometimes, she suspected that her hair was magical in its own right.

"Revising for exams," Ron replied promptly as he headed for the kitchen. "You've nothing to eat!" he complained from inside the fridge; Hermione ignored him and stumbled to the bathroom. When she emerged, Ron had apparently found her stash of emergency digestive biscuits and was munching enthusiastically, crumbs flying everywhere.

"It's taking a bit longer than I thought to get back into things," she admitted. "What time is it?"

"Half past ten, why?" Ron forced down a biscuit while answering.

"Oh no, I was due in work half an hour ago…" Hermione moaned, snatching the pack of biscuits from him and tearing into them. She briefly considered using a heating charm on one of the teacups, but decided against it when she couldn't remember which one was the freshest. It took her four and a half minutes to straighten herself up and getting into something work-appropriate, while Ron was left with his mouth hanging open in the sitting room.

"I have to leave, but you can tag along down the road if you want," she offered, finally locating her handbag and throwing an apple and her mobile into it. She had three missed calls and too many unread texts, and it was shaping up to be a very long day.

Ron looked at her as if she had two heads.

"You really are going to work? Why?"

"Come on, I have to lock up!" Hermione chased him out of the apartment, slipping into her work shoes while casting a last look around to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything. "I still have bills to pay, I can't just chuck in my job."

Ron frowned as he clattered down the stairs.

"Can't you just get something in-" At the last moment, he remembered that they were in the Muggle world now. "In our part of the world?"

"I'm sure I could," she hurried him down the stairs and out on Bermondsey Street, "but I have to get things working first, don't you think?"

"Don't take this the wrong way-" Ron started, not watching where he was walking, and Hermione had to pull him back onto the pavement before an irate bike courier crashed into him.

"Bloody twat! Why don't you watch where you're going yourself, you wanker!" Ron shouted after the completely blameless cyclist. "Honestly… " he muttered, shaking his head. "Anyway," he returned to what he was saying before he nearly was knocked down, "You know I have money, don't you?"

She did. Hermione couldn't remember exactly when they had figured out that Harry carried a Horcrux inside him, but it was while they were still living in the tent. It had been days before either of them acknowledged what it meant for Harry.

Despite knowing that _'neither can live while the other survives'_, Hermione had always held out some hope that there would be a solution, that Harry wouldn't have to die in order to defeat Voldemort. Even after Dumbledore had fallen to Snape, even after receiving his bewildering legacy and going on the run with only the faintest idea of what they needed to do, she retained enough faith in the Headmaster to believe that he had found a way for Harry to survive.

The realisation that there was no hope and that her best friend would have to die to win the war, finally put a stop to Hermione's lingering belief that Dumbledore somehow would manage to save them all from beyond the grave.

She would never forget the look in Harry's eyes the night they finally spoke about it; in her dreams she saw him as he was then, and it was worse than the nights when she saw his dead body.

It was small comfort at the time, but they had at least had time to make plans; even time enough for Harry to make a will. With characteristic generosity, he had bequeathed the contents of his Gringotts vault to Ron, who had been poor his whole life. To Hermione, whose very existence had been anathema to the powers ruling the wizarding world at the time, he had given the home of The Ancient and Most Noble House of Black.

Unless the Decree for Justifiable Confiscation had been updated in her absence, it meant that the Ministry of Magic still had a few more weeks before they had to hand over the keys to Grimmauld Place to her, Hermione realised. Assuming they had found them in the first place, of course.

"I know," Hermione replied patiently to Ron's unspoken offer of monetary assistance. "You didn't really think I'd take you up on that, did you?"

"No," he admitted. "I don't see why you couldn't borrow some money off me, though. Just to take some time off to-"

"To repeat the Hogwarts curriculum, you mean," she offered dryly. She couldn't deny that it was tempting, despite the slightly humiliating aspects of having to go back to where she had been when she was eleven.

"Exactly. Here, you could say you're sick! I'll help you with the charms if you want," he replied, brightening with his idea. "I could make it look like you have Scrofungulus, or something!"

Hermione remembered staring down her wand as she altered her parents' memories, giving them up to a life without their daughter, and shuddered. She was not inclined to have anyone pointing their wand at her if she could help it. Not even if it was Ron.

"No thanks," she replied, and Ron's face fell. "I'll take the loan," she clarified quickly, "if you don't mind. Please. I have some money laid by and I think I'll be OK, but just in case…" She would extract every last penny from Malfoy, she thought grimly, but there was no need to tell Ron about that.

Hermione had seen enough dodgy sick notes to remember the name of the GP off Cannon Street that seemed to be doling them out at a whim. The princely sum of £250 secured a few months on sick leave for her non-existing back problem. Her superiors wouldn't be pleased, but with any luck she would never have to see them again, so it hardly mattered.

Free to practice her spells until she collapsed with exhaustion, she quickly advanced to N.E.W.T. level in some areas, like fire magic which she always had a special affinity for, while finding others considerably more difficult to master. Even as she revelled in doing as much magic as possible, Hermione retained her common sense; an apartment in a Muggle area was not a place to set up a makeshift Potions lab, for example. She was fairly certain that the Ministry had someone watching her.

Almost every day, Ron collected her to Apparate them both to the Forest of Dean, in order to practice together where they couldn't be seen. Hermione may not trust Malfoy an inch, but she held no doubt he was entirely accurate in his belief that the Ministry would like nothing better than getting rid of her again.

In the wake of the Battle of Hogwarts, the Dementors had been herded into Azkaban, as prisoners rather than guards this time. To Hermione and the other detainees, it hadn't made much difference which side of the cell walls they were on. These days, the Dementors were confined in an unspecified location; even the fiercest critics of the Ministry couldn't come up with a compelling argument against keeping their whereabouts a secret. Dementors or not, Hermione was determined not to hand the Ministry an opportunity to send her to Azkaban for violating the Statute of Secrecy.

Predictably, Hermione's first concern had been security; she had lived looking over her shoulder for too long in the magical world to be able to relax until she was able to defend herself. Fortunately Ron felt the same, and he also had a family that was eminently proficient in defensive magic. It wasn't long until Hermione was satisfied that she would at least put up a fight if she was attacked, and she could afford to devote some of her energies elsewhere.

Between cramming old textbooks and wearing out her wrist swishing and flicking, she raced through _The Daily Prophet_ and recent books on the war, which Ron had found by raiding Percy's bookshelves when he was at the office.

Malfoy's version of events turned out to be broadly accurate, by the account Hermione managed to piece together.

Harry's name adorned everything from orphanages to the newly inaugurated Hogsmeade Cultural Centre, and was constantly evoked in speeches and debates. There was, however, very little evidence of people who had actually known Harry taking part in what passed for public discourse in the wizarding world.

This didn't mean that Malfoy was entirely truthful, however, and it certainly didn't mean that she ought to take her view of the current government from someone on the losing side of the war.

Exile hadn't changed Hermione's belief that house-elves and other magical creatures deserved to be free, and depressingly quickly she established that little had changed for them since before the war. Having been tried and convicted by the Wizengamot, she was inclined to think she had a more than average understanding of the wizarding legal system and its many shortcomings. During her cursory reading on the current state of affairs, she was astounded to find that many of the decrees implemented while the Ministry effectively had been under Voldemort's control still appeared to be valid. In itself, it wasn't necessarily proof of the Ministry acting to suppress criticism, but coupled with what they had done to Ron…

Hermione resolved to watch the Ministry carefully to figure out what she could do improve matters. Unfortunately, she no longer believed that badges and poorly thought-out acronyms would be sufficient to change the world. However, it seemed more urgent to figure out what she should to with Malfoy. Her initial reaction to him had been fear; it had been entirely logical, but now that she could stand up to him (she preferred not to dwell on what new skills he could have acquired in the years since the war), she could afford to be angry.

Early on, she had established that Muggle weddings held force in the wizarding world, ever since Ragnar the Rakish married no less than three different witches before he was found out in 992. His attempt to get off scot-free by claiming that none of them were valid under wizarding law, knowing that the Muggle authorities (such as they were) wouldn't be overly concerned with bigamy, had failed spectacularly. His wives united against him to convince the Wizengamot that it shouldn't matter how they had been married, once they had been joined in matrimony.

No one ever found out what happened to Ragnar after he was released from Azkaban when he had served his sentence; his three wives, however, became fast friends and ended up lending their combined skills to the construction of the Great Hall at Hogwarts.

There may be nothing Hermione could do about the fact that she was married to Malfoy, but she decided that there must be something she could do to gain a hold over her husband. Hermione Granger would not allow herself be outmanoeuvred by Draco Malfoy.

* * *

"What the fuck are you doing, my dear wife?" Draco hissed, pushing her against a wall while pointing his wand at her throat. Her knee twitched, as if she contemplated applying a well-placed knee to his groin, but she must have decided against it.

"Oi! Are you fucking mental? I'm not your bleeding wife, so let me go!" she growled, but it would take more than a swig of Polyjuice, the occasional swearword and a Disillusionment Charm to fool Draco. She seemed to be channelling her inner Weasley now; charming. He had to admit that she had been creative: it took him almost half a mile to realise that it was the slight, Indian man that was following him, and not one of the more obvious choices.

"Knockturn Alley is not the sort of place you want to make a scene," he informed her in more dispassionate tones, having done his best to swallow his annoyance until they were somewhere more private. "I'll Apparate us to your flat, and then we can talk. Do I have to Stun you, or will you come quietly?"

They landed in an undignified pile in her hall, limbs sprawling and elbows getting in everyone's way.

Draco cursed her impudence; he would have preferred not having to reveal that he could Apparate into her home at will, but he hadn't been able to come up with anything else to do before several unsavoury characters would start taking an interest in them. Naturally he had been disguised too, but he still didn't like pushing his luck.

As soon as they both had scrambled to their feet, they found themselves in the classical duelling position with wands at the ready.

Apparently having decided that bringing up the fact that he had broken down her wards would serve no useful purpose, Granger went straight to the attack without bothering to maintain her attempt at subterfuge.

"What do you think you're doing, Malfoy?"

"That's exactly what I was going to ask you, you stupid bint!" he snapped, incensed. "Do you have any idea what people in Knockturn Alley might do to you, if they saw you following me? Or to me, for that matter," he added, as if the latter was an afterthought rather than his main concern.

While he could see that she had failed to consider, up until now, how it may be perceived if she was spotted shadowing him, he knew that she was hardly going to concede so easily.

"What were you doing there, then? I'd like to hear you explaining that!" she demanded, the expression on her face making it abundantly clear that she didn't expect him to be looking for Flesh-Eating Slug Repellent for the garden.

"That's none of your business!" Draco replied, between clenched teeth.

"Like hell it is!" Granger erupted. "Don't believe for one second that I'll let you get away with your-" she flailed around for a second, since she hadn't got far enough to find anything to actually pin on him, "-your skulduggery, just because I made a deal with you!"

Draco had the gall to look amused at her stammering, which only served to aggravate her further.

"I will get you sent to Azkaban where you belong, Malfoy, if it's the last thing I do!" Her voice was getting shrill.

"What, I thought you believed in due process and all that?" he couldn't resist asking, only to get a withering glare in return. It did serve to calm her down though, as she must have realised that she was starting to sound unhinged. Draco got some perverse pleasure out of using her own lofty ideals against her; Granger was still awfully easy to wind up.

"While your insistence on making fighting me a higher priority than fighting the Ministry is flattering, I must stress that it is extremely shortsighted of you," he said in his best supercilious manner.

"Really?" Granger asked, her tone of voice making it quite clear that she knew things living in gutters whose opinion she respected more than Draco's.

"You were the best friend of the Boy-Who-Died. Right now, they all feel that they owe you something. Use it, Granger!" He spread his long fingers, as if to emphasise the endless opportunities open to her. "You've a golden opportunity to set yourself up in an unassailable position to actually change things. Don't waste it on trying to get one over me. You can always do that afterwards," he sensibly pointed out.

Granger reluctantly seemed to see the logic in his proposal, even though she clearly still didn't trust him an inch.

"Give me one reason why I should let you get away with blackmailing me, and go after the Ministry instead?" she asked, adding "For the time being," lest he thought she would forget about him.

"Maybe I think it's a waste of potential if you're reduced to a figurehead, like St. Potter," he suggested.

"I don't believe for a second that you'd be disappointed if I don't achieve anything, except getting you the Manor and your bloody money back," she sneered, not bothering to hide her disbelief.

"Au contraire; I'm very much invested in your success in reforming the lamentably stagnant wizarding world," Draco drawled in response, and Granger lost her temper again. Utterly predictable.

"Don't tell me you're suddenly interested in house-elf rights! What is it you want, Malfoy?" She was furious, chest heaving and hair standing out from her head in a brown halo. "I have absolutely no reason to take your word for anything, so stop trying to bamboozle me!"

Draco rubbed his face with his palm, and decided that he would have to take her into his confidence to some extent, or risk losing her cooperation altogether. This wasn't just about being able to transact his business dealings in Knockturn Alley without having to watch out for her amateur spying antics; he _needed_ her. Gods help him.

"Remember I was quite good at the numbers bit in Arithmancy?" he asked, and Granger nodded.

To everyone's surprise, Draco had taken to maths like a duck to water, bending equations to his will. He never told anyone that Tracey Davis lent him her Muggle textbook on second-degree equations when he was struggling in the beginning. She had just passed him the book under the table in Transfiguration, without a word. A few weeks later he handed it back in a similar manner, flipping the shrunk book into her open book bag. When the Inquisitorial Squad questioned Tracey's lineage, Draco had assiduously assured the rest of them that it was impeccable and that she was as pure-blooded as he was (albeit less aristocratic). Snape had taught them well; Slytherins paid their debts, and that was all there was to it.

"After the war, I started looking at numbers in the wizarding world. Did you know there was only forty of us in our year?" he continued and Granger nodded again. Both of them could probably have named every single one of them, even if it was almost a decade since they were at Hogwarts.

"In my grandfather's first year, two hundred students came to Hogwarts for the sorting." Draco had captured her attention now.

"The birth rate almost halved between 1896 and now, even including Muggle-borns. Our year was very small, due to the first war. It went up when the Dark Lord was defeated the first time, but there were still only one hundred and twenty six students going to Hogwarts this year." He stopped for a second, to organise his thoughts and decide how much he would tell her.

"We have managed to reduce the number of new wizards and witches with almost forty percent, Granger. It wasn't just two civil wars that did it. The war against Grindelwald and the Muggle wars did a lot of damage, too. No use having wards up if you're caught up unawares in the Blitz of London."

As he continued, he nodded to her in ironic acknowledgement:

"The amount of Muggle-borns has increased with the Muggle population over the last centuries, so if you were to concentrate on pure-bloods the numbers would be even worse. Wizards may live longer, but as far as I can ascertain they manage to get themselves killed by accident much more often than Muggles. By my reckoning, there's around thirty thousand wizards and witches in Britain at the moment. I've come to the conclusion that if there's going to be any substantial wizarding population in Britain in the future, some things will have to change."

"Thirty thousand," Granger said slowly, as if she was trying the idea on for size.

Even if she hadn't been in exile, Draco thought it improbable that she would have noticed the scale of the population collapse. In his experience, most people considered only the deaths closest to them. They usually failed to realise that the reason that one seemed to run into the same people all the time, was because there simply wasn't that many of them around anymore.

"That's less than the number of people living in Canterbury, for Heaven's sake!" Granger exclaimed in alarm.

"We cannot afford one more war, or our society will collapse." Draco's words were precise and understated, but he could tell that she understood the implications by the utterly serious look on her face, her usual contempt for him temporarily absent.

"If it wasn't for the steady inflow of Muggle-borns, it would be too late already." he continued. "The Ministry is playing with fire. Sooner or later, its strategy to divide and conquer will breed another war, and then… Something will live on, but it won't be the world I grew up in. It simply won't be possible to maintain the infrastructure we need to stay hidden from the Muggles. If the Ministry can't cope, the International Statute of Secrecy will kick in and wizarding Britain will be shut down. The wizards who are left will be evacuated. People will emigrate to the continent or America, I suppose; they have their own problems there, and will be happy to welcome immigrants. What will be left in Britain? I imagine it will be rather like the Romans in Britain at the end of their empire; some survivors clinging on to the old ways, others leaving for good. A few isolated settlements, some die-hards staying in their ancestral homes…"

Draco fell quiet for a moment, thinking of centurions leaving the Hadrian Wall for the last time before returning his island to the barbarians. "Even if I wanted to cling on the past and pure-blood customs, I can see that we simply must change our ways if there are to be any wizards left in Britain."

He noticed that Granger still looked stunned; good. He hadn't been sure if he would be able to convince her, or if she would trust him sufficiently to even listen. Thankfully, she was numerate enough to understand the implications of a reducing population. Most wizards only had the flimsiest understanding of numbers, which presumably was what kept most of them from seeing the danger. That, and their utter lack of critical thinking, of course.

"Bringing you back to our world was… necessary. It wasn't a coincidence that the Ministry didn't have the guts to kill you, or keep you in Azkaban," they both shivered at the prospect, remembering the feeling of being chilled to the depths of the soul, "but they were still hell-bent on getting rid of you. If there is anyone who can force the wizarding world to change, it's you."

Flabbergasted, Granger looked at him, not quite believing that he just paid her what was probably the most unexpected compliment she had ever received. The grim look on his face seemed to convince her, and he could see her wrestling with the implausible idea that Draco Malfoy wanted her to reform the wizarding world.

"I needed to get you back, so I had to come up with a way." He hammered his point home and she looked incredulous; clearly she didn't believe he was that altruistic. "Oh, I'll restore the family name and regain our influence as well; it just so happens that you'll be useful for that too," he added, to make it sound a bit more believable.

Draco neglected to mention his other reasons for marrying her; he had been quite honest enough, if he was any judge.

"So what are your ideas then? Increasing the birth rate, I assume, and prevent new wars at all costs?" She narrowed her eyes, apparently deep in thought. "Is there any official statistics? What are the costs of childcare like, before Hogwarts?"

Draco felt his shoulders relax and his fists unclench. Granger actually got it; it wasn't just him anymore. Apart from the relief, he was elated at the prospect to have someone moderately intelligent to discuss his findings with. His mother didn't really count.

"If all wizards had as many children as the Weasleys we'd be fine," he said, with a scowl at the reference to the red-headed proliferates. "I've looked at what has been used to increase the birth rate in other countries, and France has all those benefit for mothers who have three children -"

"But that would require increased tax revenues, or cuts – what sort of budget does the Ministry have?" Granger frowned, her long absence leaving her unable to recall much about public finances in the wizarding world.

"They spend quite a bit on pensions, stipends to the Order of Merlin recipients," they both snorted, none of them obviously having been deemed worthy of one, "salaries of course, and the running of Hogwarts and St. Mungo's…" Granger listened in rare silence, as Draco described how the wizarding tax system, administered by the goblins, worked.

A few hours later, after they had argued and drawn diagrams and debated different solutions in relative harmony, Granger seemed to remember something.

"You know, there's a policy in China that you're only allowed to have one child-" She silenced his immediate protest with a look: "Among the Muggles. Only one child – what if there was some sort of law that you had to reproduce? That's exactly the type of knee-jerk reaction some dolt at the ministry is bound to resort to when they find out-" She didn't get any further before Draco added his own contribution:

"And you'd have to get married too of course – imagine, forcing people to get married and have children-" They looked at each other in horrified fascination, before the comical side won over. Draco started laughing, helpless in the grips of vivid images of the carnage likely to ensue if the Ministry tried to browbeat its citizens into matrimonial bliss. Granger went one step further, among her giggles:

"The only way it could get worse would be if the Mi- Ministry would match people on its own, and they'd _have_ to get married…."

They were both slumped across the table now, picturing the scenes as the Ministry paired people off with its usual wisdom and attention to detail:

"Ron with Pansy-" Granger tried to get out between her giggles, before Draco waved his hand and managed to squeeze out:

"No! I know! Crabbe and Ginny Weasley!" before he collapsed, hitting the table several times with his fist for emphasis among paroxysms of laughter.

"Right," Granger said, dusting herself off once they had recovered. "I think we both agree that forcing people to reproduce will be counter-productive, and could cause another civil war if we're unlucky."

"Yes," he agreed sombrely.

**-oOo-**

* * *

**Would Draco have convinced you?**


	8. Chapter 7 - Hell Is Other People

**Thanks to MysticDew for helping me figure out where to take this chapter! Any remaining mistakes are my own.  
**

* * *

**Chapter 7**

**Hell Is Other People **

**-oOo-**

**11AM, the 30th of March 2005 - Diagon Alley, London**

Hermione only managed to restrain herself until the soles of Malfoy's boots had disappeared through the Floo, before rushing to do her own calculations. Despite the lack of anything approaching official statistics from the wizarding world, she found his numbers plausible enough. It was hardly surprising that no one else had spotted the trends; a populace which allowed Voldemort to take over twice could hardly be trusted to tie its own shoelaces, much less saving itself from extinction.

Somehow, being married to Malfoy seemed slightly more palatable after all that.

Hermione still wouldn't trust him any further than she could throw him and she was by no means convinced that he had eschewed his old notions about blood purity, but he had at least convinced her that he was seriously concerned about the future of the wizarding world and determined to do something to stop its decline.

It did seem more urgent to do something about the Ministry than making sure Malfoy got what he deserved. And, galling as it was to admit, it was embarrassingly obvious that she needed to brush up more on her spellwork before going after him again.

* * *

Rejoining the world of the living wasn't as difficult as Hermione had imagined. As she walked down Diagon Alley she held her head high, pretending not to notice the whispers following her like a wave down the street towards Eeylops Owl Emporium. Her pockets were full of Malfoy galleons. Apparently, it would be most unwise to turn up at Gringotts before she could persuade the goblins to let bygones be bygones. Ron hadn't dared showing his face at the bank yet either; Bill had been quite insistent.

Arriving at the Emporium, she found that the old shopkeeper had been replaced by a pimply youth. He made up for his lack of finesse by not recognising her.

"An owl, was it?" he asked, once she had torn him from the Muggle book he was reading under the counter. It looked like a battered copy of the Da Vinci Code, and Hermione sighed inwardly. If she ever became Minister for Magic, some books would actually deserve being banned...

"Yes, please."

She couldn't put off getting an owl any longer, despite the way her stomach would twist uncomfortably at the thought. Having a pet had never really worked out for her, ever since the goldfish she got when she was seven perished after just a few weeks. Her beloved Crookshanks had been at the Burrow at Bill and Fleur's wedding; she still had no idea of what happened to him. Somewhere, she wanted to believe that he was ruling the hedges around Ottery St. Catchpole, the uncontested king of badgers and hedgehogs.

"Right. I have this fella here…" the shop assistant said, gesticulating towards a brown-speckled owl with white circles around the eyes, blinking irritably at being roused in the middle of the day. "He's a Northern White-faced Scops, very reliable." He pointed at a tiny owl with a black head, whose body became brighter the further down you went. "This here's a pygmy owl. All the crack with the posh bints, pygmy owls are."

Finally, Hermione chose a tawny owl with chestnut feathers named Ruta. She hooted softly in Hermione's hand, and hopped into the cage the youth produced without fuss.

Afterwards, Hermione spent some blissful hours at Flourish and Blotts; it got easier and easier to ignore the stares and carry on with her business. She was levitating a small mountain of books on wizarding law and an ancient, battered volume that hinted promisingly of Occlumency (she hadn't forgotten the need to safeguard her mind from Malfoy), her brow furrowed in concentration, when someone bumped into her with some force.

The pile of books wavered precipitously, but she managed to straighten them without any casualties and deposit them on a empty chair, before turning around to catch the culprit. He was busy dusting himself off.

"Justin!" she exclaimed. Despite the long, white scar across his face and the way his curly hair had started creeping backwards, Justin Finch-Fletchley was clearly recognisable.

"Hermione," he answered, frowning and subtly angling his body away from hers. "I do apologise; very clumsy of me. I beg your pardon." Hermione smiled at him despite herself, delighted to see him although she was starting to suspect that he wasn't especially pleased to see her. Back on his feet, Justin was already moving away from her.

"Well, er- It's nice to see you out and about. Good day to you," he said, walking rather hurriedly towards the exit.

Hermione stared after him. She had always liked Justin, and it hurt to be treated to nothing more personal than his impeccable manners. Was this the way it was going to be in the future, even with her old friends from the DA? Somehow, Malfoy had wormed his way in and fooled her into believing she would be welcomed back with open arms. It had better get better soon, or she would bloody well order all her books through owl post in the future.

* * *

**9.30 PM, the 17th of April 2005 - Bratten's, Diagon Alley, London**

"Ma- -y darling, Draco?"

At the last moment Hermione remembered that they were in public, and Malfoy smiled mockingly at her mangled term of endearment. They were on display, seated in the middle of Bratten's restaurant where the great and the good of the wizarding world congregated, and Malfoy was in his element.

Hermione had already spotted Percy Weasley, anxiously minding his manners; Professor Slughorn with an unknown protege; and Amanda Armsworth, formerly of the Holyhead Harpies, sitting at the back of the room. Hermione was rather impressed with herself that she had managed to recognise a Quidditch player, of all things; Ron would be proud.

"What is it, darling?" Draco asked. She must remember to use his first name now, or things would get exceedingly awkward. The elaborate table setting even sported a fish knife, amongst other implements not normally seen in the wild, and Hermione noticed how he dramatically was clutching the salad fork.

"You do know that you don't have to pick up the right cutlery and look at me to make sure I know which fork to use, do you?" she asked dryly. Draco looked innocent.

"Would I ever?"

"Yes. You would. For your information, my parents are- I was raised by dentists. Solid upper middle class. I mightn't have been raised in a manor like you, but we were rather well off."

He was surprised, clearly never having spent a lot of time trying to figure out her standing in the Muggle world. Being Muggle-born automatically landed Hermione at the bottom of the social scale when she entered the wizarding world, at least in the eyes of the circles Draco grew up in.

"And I wasn't raised in a barn either," she added for good measure, and he raised his eyebrows.

"Really, because-" Hermione decided to cut him off, before he said something she would make him regret.

"While we're having it all out, did you realise that I've managed to buy my own flat in London? I was actually making rather a good salary at my job at the hotel too," she informed him. "Which reminds me of something - will I have to support the two of us? There's no way you can have a job, with all that free time you seem to have." For a second she didn't know if he would take offence or not, but then Draco actually broke into an honest-to-goodness laugh. Hermione couldn't remember ever hearing him laugh properly before.

"Malfoys don't work. We have pursuits, which may or may not result in a considerable profit. Rest assured you'll never have to work for a living; any paid work you undertake will be purely at your own choice." She had to ask, now that he had given her an opening.

"Even without the Malfoy fortune being returned by the Ministry?"

"Even then. We're not paupers, you know," he said, turning up his nose daintily at the notion.

As she looked away, not wanting Draco to see her bubbling over with laughter, Hermione briefly looked straight into the startled eyes of Percy Weasley. Apparently, he had turned round to see what was so funny, and looked thunderstruck at the sight of his brother's Muggle-born best friend and Draco Malfoy actually appearing to enjoy each other's company.

* * *

Hermione and Draco had decided to dispense with any elaborate set-up of meeting through her work to free the house-elves. It was hardly prudent to draw attention to Draco the house-elf owner, especially considering that Dobby, another conveniently dead hero, could be associated with the Malfoys' less than stellar track record in that department.

The second obvious idea had also been dismissed as impractical; they didn't have time to wait until they could become colleagues and could get reacquainted through their work. It would probably have been more credible than what ended up being their final plan, but Draco had no intention to start a career anytime soon and Hermione would have to sit her N.E.W.T.s to get any sort of job people would expect her to want in the first place.

Instead, they had to compromise: the official story was that Draco had contacted Hermione in order to apologise for his conduct towards her in the war. When he suggested it, she immediately pointed out that he would have to apologise to everyone else he had wronged too, secretly relishing this proof that divine justice did exist despite all evidence to the contrary. His answer managed to astound her.

"I already have, Granger. Quite the reformed sinner, me."

"What are you talking about?"

"Apologies, of course. Do you normally change the subject in the middle of a conversation?"

"Who did you apologise to, if I may ask?" Hermione didn't believe him, and didn't bother hiding it.

"Loony Lovegood and Mr Ollivander, of course. Regardless of what you may believe, it's not Malfoy custom to stuff our cellar full of prisoners."

"You prefer a quick turnaround instead, as it were? Get in quick, spot of torture, back home by teatime?" Draco didn't dignify that with an answer.

"So that means that Ron is due an apology as well, then?" Hermione asked innocently. He put on an injured look.

"Of course. If only the Healers would have let me in, I would have rushed to his bedside at St. Mungo's." This time it was unholy glee she didn't bother hiding from him to spare his feelings.

"Can I please, please come along for that? Promise me you won't go without me!"

"Concentrate on the issue at hand, Granger. I meet with you to offer my apologies, and you decide, in a fit of misplaced optimism, that we should pursue an acquaintance to overcome the divisions left from the war."

It did sound like something she might have thought was a good idea seven years ago. Now, she wasn't as certain that the world could be fixed with good intentions, but that didn't matter for the purposes of this little farce.

"Sounds reasonable," Hermione agreed reluctantly.

"While in fact you fancy the pants off me and that's the best excuse you can come up with."

"Malfoy!" He held his hands up and smirked.

"That's what everyone will think, and it'll work in our favour. Think about it. It will be harder to explain what I'd see in you, though."

Well, he had a point; if you cared for such things and were willing to overlook his appalling personality, the smug bastard was rather good-looking. Hermione could see how he could have a certain bad boy charm as well, which would appeal to the idiots who liked someone dangerous with a chequered past and wanted to fix them. Even before she ended up with a chequered past herself, she had been smart enough to understand that you can't fix people like a beaten-up Ford Anglia.

But what about her? No one would believe that Draco fancied a chance at the Virgin Saint of Gryffindor in a vain hope of ironing out her issues –

"Maybe we can play up the murder angle? You were really curious to find out why a girl like me committed murder, and then we found some common ground? Broken people bonding over issues?" Draco looked at her with reluctant respect.

"You don't pull your punches, do you?" he muttered under his breath. "It could work," he said loudly. "I suppose we have a plan then."

* * *

Initially, Draco knew that his pursuit of Hermione would be widely interpreted as revenge. The Draco Malfoy of old would only have been too pleased to string Hermione Granger along and set her up for a very public fall, now that she was the golden girl of the wizarding world again. Once people saw that he was serious about her, he imagined they would fall into two camps: one side believing that he was honestly smitten, and the other, more cynical lot assuming that he wanted to rebuild his reputation.

In the end, it didn't really matter. The crucial piece in his rehabilitation was Granger; as long as she appeared to have hooked up with him willingly, she would bring him along on her rising tide.

"Some people will always believe that you'll be with me for your own reasons anyway, no matter what stories we put out. At least this sounds vaguely credible, and not too pat either," she said when they laid down their plans for their first public reunion after the war, and Draco reminded himself that he would be foolish to underestimate her deviousness.

* * *

Draco insisted that they played out their whole romance as if it really happened, in order to avoid giving the Ministry or any of their other enemies ammunition to use against them. He had managed to keep their few preliminary meetings clandestine, but thwarting the Ministry's surveillance was risky and required needless effort.

There was also the press to worry about; the last thing they wanted was some photograph being published that threw doubt on the veracity of their relationship.

Draco picked Hogsmeade for their first official meeting after her return from exile. Without batting an eyelid he brought Hermione to Madam Puddifoot's, completely ignoring her expression of exaggerated disbelief in the vein of "I-cannot-believe-you-brought-me-here".

It being March, the tea shop was blessedly free from any romantic decor and they were served without any fuss by Madam Puddifoot herself. Draco could have sworn that she was even stouter now than the last time he was here, after making the fatal mistake of yielding to Pansy's pleas to bring her out for tea in fifth year.

While Hermione had to concede it was as good a venue as any, she did manage to milk as much entertainment as possible out of Draco's faux apology. It didn't matter to him; as long as it seemed credible, he almost didn't care about being made to look ridiculous in public. Almost. He could always extract a little revenge later.

They parted ways with Oscar-worthy performances; Hermione was all simpering insistence that they would pursue their acquaintance, and Draco acted reluctant but allowed himself be persuaded.

The next time they met up for a drink at the Three Broomsticks. Draco had timed it carefully to coincide with dinner at Hogwarts, to minimise the risk of any teachers dropping in for a quiet drink after putting up with the little hellions all day. There were a smattering of other patrons in the pub, but they were nursing their pints and didn't pay any attention to the unprecedented spectacle of the last scion of the Malfoys having a civilised conversation with Hermione Granger.

The third time they met up officially, at a wizarding restaurant in Kent, Draco attracted some curious looks but no one seemed to recognise Hermione. Perhaps straightening her hair had been a mistake, which Draco didn't fail to point out to her several times over the course of the evening. It was almost vexing not to be noticed when they had gone to so much trouble.

However, what happened at their fourth rendezvous more than made up for it.


	9. Chapter 8 - Tales of a Dragon Tamer

**Thanks to MysticDew for all her contributions to this story!**

* * *

**Chapter 8**

**Tales Of A Dragon Tamer**

**-oOo-**

**8PM, the 12th of April 2005– The Marigold, Bermondsey Street, London**

Ron had started referring to them as Hermione's Muggle years; he seemed to be the only person to show any interest in where Hermione had been, between being sentenced by the Wizengamot at eighteen and returning to the wizarding world at twenty-five.

Sadly, there wasn't much to tell.

Predictably, Ron's interest in hotel politics and Muggle celebrities turned out to be limited; what really piqued his curiosity were her travels. Early in her career in the hotel industry, Hermione discovered that the benefits of working as much as possible were twofold: she didn't have time to spend any money, and she was paid time-and-a-half at the same time. When she did take time off, she could afford to go almost anywhere she fancied.

For a long time, that was what made Hermione's life in exile bearable. Only rarely did her knowledge of the magical places hidden somewhere down the back lanes of Paris or in dusty corners of the Assyrian desert mar her enjoyment of the Muggle destinations she visited.

Usually, she would stay in hostels; partly to save money, and partly because it was an easy way of meeting people. Holiday friendships and romances didn't require much back story, beyond being Jean from London who liked history and skinny-dipping in the moonlight. And, as things inevitably came to an end, goodbyes were easy and expected.

At home, Hermione found out the hard way that being evasive only worked for so long, before questions started to accumulate quicker than leaflets from local takeaways built up in her letterbox while she was on the other side of the world.

She wasn't in touch with any of her relatives. Seemingly, she was content to work in a hotel reception, despite having a posh accent and a bookshelf crammed full of books, and surely could have gone to university if she had wanted to. Hermione had never heard of _Fargo_ or Alanis Morissette, and for years a car backfiring in the vicinity made her duck and take cover. All the peculiarities she had acquired by living in the wizarding world since she was eleven, and then by fighting in a war invisible to those she lived among now, were simply too much to explain away. Hermione didn't intend to push people away; her past did it for her.

Far too many friendships; with her flatmate Caroline, with Stephen who started at the hotel at the same time, with too many others, crashed and burned when faced with the many things that didn't add up about Jean Taylor. Lying didn't work either; Hermione was a much better liar these days, but she could never quite know when something seemingly innocuous would trip her up. According to the terms of her sentence, a breach of the Statute of Secrecy could send her back to Azkaban, so the truth was out of her reach.

In time, Hermione learnt to cultivate a shell around her; she was friendly and professional, but she did not make friends. Coupled with her insistence on high standards and an intolerance for playing fast and loose with the rules, it earned her a reputation as a cold-hearted battle-axe with the more transient hotel staff. The long-timers mostly got on with her, but found her rather withdrawn and lacking in personality, which she liked to think would have astounded her old friends.

Having friends again, real friends who knew mostly everything about her, was in equal parts unnerving and a blessed relief. It helped that she hardly was overwhelmed with social overtures; a few weeks after her return, the only people from the wizarding world she had met up with were Ron, Malfoy, Charlie Weasley and Luna Lovegood.

The second time she had arranged to see Ron, Charlie had tagged along and the three of them went for a drink down at Hermione's local pub in Bermondsey Street, the Marigold. Hermione often slipped in there if she was off work on a weekday afternoon, to have a glass of wine and read a book. She liked being surrounded by the soothing murmur of voices, even though they mostly were talking about the Premiership and last night's soaps if you listened closely. She also liked that the Marigold was a real pub, nothing like the pretentious gastro pubs that seemed to be spreading over the area at an inexorable pace.

The Weasley brothers fit right in; the look of surprise on the barman's face when they entered was entirely due to Hermione bringing company, for once. He quickly served up her usual red wine and two pints of ale. After some good-natured arguing about who would pay for the first round, all three of them squeezed into a corner booth where they could use some surreptitious magic to ensure that they weren't overheard.

Charlie was slightly stockier than he had been the last time Hermione had time to really look at him, at Bill and Fleur's wedding. Mrs Weasley must be happy now; his hair was impeccably short, but any suggestion of neatness was ruined by the unkempt beard covering his chin. It was even redder than his hair, and made him look less like a standard issue Weasley. Perhaps that was the point.

With relief, Hermione noticed that Ron's beard had disappeared since she last saw him. His face was still thinner than she remembered, the cheekbones more visible than they had been when he was a teenager, but this was the Ron she had known since she was eleven. No longer did she have to laboriously trace the remains of the boy he had been on a stranger's face to find him again.

Charlie won the argument about who would pay for the first round, by pointing out that he was older than either of them, and had missed out on too many chances to do his duty as an older brother and get Ron drunk while he was still underage. Once he had pocketed the change, Charlie immediately dispelled any awkwardness in characteristic fashion.

"I'm glad you're back, Hermione. I'm sorry about how things were for you all these years. There's nothing I can say, except that I should have done something."

"There's no need to apologise. You're as bad as Ron; you really have nothing to be sorry for." She smiled at him. "It's great to see you, though."

"Naturally. After seven years as a Muggle, clearly the thing you missed the most was my ruggedly handsome face!"

They all laughed, and Hermione remembered how nice it was to be around Charlie, who never got wound up about anything and seemed to be able to defuse most situations. Maybe it came from spending so much time around dragons; everything else must seem fairly easy to handle in comparison.

"So are you still in Romania?"

"I moved on to Sweden after the war, actually. I'm running a breeding project to cross the Swedish Short-Snout with the Norwegian Ridgeback in Miekak up north." Seeing Hermione's blank look he added: "Not to worry, you wouldn't have heard of it."

"It's at the back arse of nowhere!" Ron said. "Sometimes they go to have a look at the Muggle motorway in Norway for kicks, to convince themselves that there's still other people in the world."

"That was once! I never should've told you about that," Charlie groaned, but Ron's wide grin informed him that it wouldn't be forgotten in a hurry. "The winters get really bloody long up there," Charlie explained to Hermione, "The first year there were only three of us and I got cabin fever, after two months in the dark. So I took my broom to the nearest gas station, just to see something different and get a bar of choccie."

"As opposed to Apparating somewhere civilised, like normal people do!" Ron interjected.

"I hadn't been anywhere close enough to Apparate to! It's halfway to the sodding Arctic, Ron. It's not like England, where you can Apparate back home for the afternoon."

They continued to squabble, and the argument comfortably morphed into talk about Sweden. Ron made a determined attempt to find out if Charlie had landed himself a Swedish girlfriend yet. Hermione couldn't help laughing at him, but went bright red when he asked her what was so funny. Charlie took pity on her.

"Contrary to what people may think, I'm not actually gay," he explained.

Hermione blushed even more, even though she didn't think it was possible.

"I'm sorry," she said in a very small voice. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable or imply anything-"

"I think we can all see who's uncomfortable here!" Ron interrupted, laughing at her discomfort.

"Shut up, Ron," his brother said. "Hermione, I don't give a toss; it's just that I'm really not gay. Promise. It would be absolutely fine if I were; our uncle Gideon was, actually." She gratefully grabbed the lifeline with both hands

"Really? I never heard much about him, except that he was killed in the first war. Did you ever meet him?" Goaded beyond her endurance, she turned around. "Ron, would you ever stop snickering?"

"No!" he answered happily.

They left the pub at closing time, long after they lost track of whose round it was next. Hermione had to hush Ron and Charlie so they wouldn't sing "A Wizard's Staff Has A Knob On The End" loud enough to wake the neighbours. She was relieved to find that Charlie had brought enough Sobering Up Potion for the two of them to Apparate home to the Burrow from her flat. It wouldn't eradicate the inevitable hangover, but anything that kept them from Splinching was fine by her.

"Watch and learn, little brother; watch and learn," Charlie admonished Ron, who was clinging onto Hermione's bookshelf for dear life and looked for all the world like he never had even heard of potions before.

Charlie chugged back the potion and shuddered all over, before straightening his back and making Ron swallow his dose.

That night Hermione realised that Charlie was her favourite Weasley, after Ron.

* * *

After years of lying about her past, Hermione found it unnerving to meet people who knew her all the way from when she was an over-eager girl with teeth too big for her face, to the weary fighter arrested at the battlefield with her hands covered in someone else's blood.

It did save time, however.

When she sent an e-mail to Charlie asking him if they could meet up for a drink without Ron, he didn't ask any questions. Thankfully, he also seemed to be under no apprehension that Hermione was asking him out on a date. It had surprised her when he handed her an e-mail address, but apparently living in the sticks in Sweden was sufficient to persuade at least one Weasley that Muggle communications sometimes beat owls.

When they were ensconced in their usual booth at the Marigold and fortified with drinks, Charlie leaned back to let Hermione start the conversation. She was busy pondering what a reassuring person he was to be around; the exact opposite of Malfoy, with whom you needed to keep your guard up every moment. Charlie was not only charming in a thoroughly non-manipulative way; he also gave the impression that he would have your back if the situation ever required it. With some force Hermione ejected Malfoy from her thoughts, and brought her mind back to the business at hand.

Initially she had considered asking Charlie to come to her apartment instead, but eventually decided against it. Like Dementors, bad memories always seemed worse in solitude; surrounded by other people going about their lives, it was easier to remember that they belonged in the past.

"I was hoping you could help me understand how things were for your family, after…" Hermione began, picking her words with great care.

"After the war, you mean?" Charlie smiled wryly.

"Yes." She seized gratefully on his impersonal way of describing it; Hermione didn't know him well enough to know how he was dealing with the loss of his father and brother, and she certainly didn't want to offend him or bring back bad memories if she didn't have to.

"Especially since at least two members of my family still are hell-bent on punishing you for what to all intents and purposes amounted to saving Harry, I guess?"

She raised her chin to answer that.

"I can't- Look, that's none of my business. And I guess the rest isn't either, I'd just really like to find out what happened, and since Ron wasn't there…" she trailed off. It did sound rather nosey, put like that.

"Right. Don't worry, I'll tell you. You definitely have as much right to find out as- as Ron has. I'd be grateful if you'd keep it to yourself for the moment, though. We're still kind of spoon-feeding him at the moment." Charlie omitted to mention that this was mostly due to Ron taking a dim view of the aforementioned reaction to Hermione's return and the ruptures that had caused in the family, for which she was grateful.

"I was in the battle too, of course, but you'd remember that," he continued.

"All of you were," she said under her breath; some days you never forget, as long as you live.

"All of us," he agreed, "and it could have ended worse, but that's hard to remember when you're in the middle of it."

* * *

Charlie found himself in a huddle with Ginny, George and Percy in the Great Hall, where the bodies were laid out. Their mum was with Ron at St. Mungo's; Bill and Fleur had followed her there as soon as they found out what was happening.

Faced with his younger siblings and their grief, Charlie felt entirely inadequate. Bill was so much better at this sort of thing, and Charlie wished that he could have stayed; but of course Bill had to go. It didn't help that what Charlie wanted most desperately in the world was for his dad to tell them everything would be fine.

Ginny sounded shrill as she demanded to go to St. Mungo's too, right this minute. When Charlie explained for the fifteenth time that they couldn't, that it was jam-packed with people already, Ginny's mouth turned into a thin line and she stared right ahead, ignoring him. George was almost catatonic and refused to talk to either of them. It was Percy who, with endless patience and understanding, finally made him eat something and clean up a little.

It really didn't help that the bodies of the fallen were there with them. Charlie was immensely grateful when Professor Sprout organised for them to be moved, in the no–nonsense manner of hers he remembered from when he was a student at Hogwarts, long before he became a soldier there.

The long, miserable day eventually turned into night, and Charlie was hard pressed to find any reason for cheer. Yes, they had won; but the price seemed too steep – except that the price for losing would have been unimaginable. He thought of Remus and Tonks, stretched out on the cold flagstones, and their orphaned son, and how the ranks of his fellow Order members were gaping empty.

In the quiet hours before morning, as his younger siblings finally succumbed to their exhaustion, Charlie wept for the dead.

He would always regret not finding a way of making sure the younger students couldn't sneak back into the castle. The responsibility for attacking them lay firmly on Voldemort's side, but what sort of people were the rest of them, that they allowed children get entangled in this? As he looked at Ginny, remembering that she was only eleven when she first got mixed up with Voldemort, Charlie realised the irony. If he couldn't keep his own little sister safe, who was he to think that he could have managed to save the others?

With dawn came Bill, bearing news of Ron, or rather no news – his state was unchanged.

For days the Weasleys lingered at Hogwarts, before they all went to Shell Cottage together. After being abandoned for months and being ransacked several times, the Burrow was hardly fit to house the hens in, and none of them could face staying with Aunt Muriel again.

Nobody suggested splitting up. It was quite clear that their mum would find it even harder to cope if she didn't have them all under the same roof. To her eternal credit, Fleur made no fuss at all when she realised that she would be staying in the same house as all of her surviving in-laws for the foreseeable future.

After the first day Charlie felt stifled; he got used to having his own space long ago, and it was only now he realised the extent he had come to rely on it to clear his head. There was nothing for him to do at Shell Cottage, except getting in the others' way, as they grieved and quibbled and tried to find a way to live on. For want of anything better he would escape to the garden, where he usually ended up by Dobby's grave. For some reason it seemed easier to remember out there, with the fresh wind from the sea whipping his hair.

Their mum was worn ragged by flitting between Ron in hospital, sorting out funeral arrangements and trying to attend to those still living. As time wore on, the Healers began to sound less and less optimistic of Ron's eventual recovery, but Molly still insisted on not leaving him alone for a minute. The others reluctantly gave in; it was easier to go to St. Mungo's and spend a few hours staring at Ron, than having another fight about it.

One morning, on his way back from some precious moments of solitude in the garden before everyone else woke up, Charlie came across his mum in the kitchen.

She was baking.

The achingly familiar act reminded him of all the mornings when the same smell of bread had wound its way up the stairs, waking him up, when the Burrow still was the only home he had ever known. He would sneak down the stairs to get some tidbits and his mum's undivided attention, before his brothers woke up and shattered the busy silence of the kitchen.

This morning, two loaves were baking in the oven and invisible fingers were kneading another four, while Molly was mixing the dough for more. Small, desolate tears were rolling down her cheeks as she measured up the yeast, landing in the mixing bowl and creating little craters in the flour.

"Oh, mum," was all Charlie managed to say. He hugged her as if he would never let her go, letting the yeast pour into the dough mixture unchecked and quite ruining it.

* * *

It took Charlie years to realise that something was wrong with Ginny, apart from the obvious.

That first year, they all concentrated on just getting through and picking up the pieces of their lives again.

George had become a moody stranger who kept lashing out at anyone within earshot, and consequently he consumed most of their attention. Percy rose to the occasion heroically, bottling up most of his own regrets. When George had regained some interest in life again, it was Percy's turn to break down in a storm of self-recriminations.

After a year, Charlie managed to extract himself to Romania again. He didn't think it would help anyone if he lost his marbles completely, and he simply had to get some space for himself. He did, however, go back home every single weekend. After a few years, when his employer ceased to be understanding of family issues caused by a war long past, Charlie had simply handed in his notice and transferred to Wales. The dragon reservation in Glasfynydd was within easy Apparation range and with time the claustrophobic cloud that had hung over the Burrow had dissipated, so he figured he may as well make his mother happy and move home.

That was when he finally noticed that his sister wasn't acting like herself anymore.

His mum, Ginny, Percy, George and himself were living at the Burrow. Bill, Fleur and Victoire called over often, as Victoire spent her days at the Burrow while her parents worked. During the war, both Bill and Fleur had left Gringotts to work for the order. After Ron broke into the bank, they had abandoned all hope of being rehired and set up their own freelance curse-breaking outfit in France and Britain. It was slow to get off the ground, but they persevered.

George had started up Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes again with Lee Jordan, but on a much smaller scale than before. Under Voldemort's reign the Diagon Alley shop had been closed down and the contents confiscated by the Ministry. Compensation was not forthcoming from the new regime. George and Lee ran the business out of the garage at the Burrow, providing much needed Galleons to the family coffers.

Percy had to start over within the Ministry for the third time, which he actually had mellowed enough to joke about; it still didn't bring in much money, though.

Charlie never made that much money in the first place, and he had to take a significant pay cut to get work in Wales. For some reason, dragonkeeping never attracted the galleons that seemed to flow to other areas of magical research. Charlie reckoned it was because _anyone_ would want to work with dragons. You would want to get some serious compensation to waste your time on less interesting creatures, like Flobberworms or Crups, however.

In the past, the Weasleys would have considered themselves fortunate to have three adults bringing in money to the household. However, there was the small matter of Ron's hospital bills. For as long as anyone could remember, care at St. Mungo's had been free of charge. However, in the wake of the war the Ministry declared that it no longer could afford to subsidise the care of long-term patients and families were told that they had to assume responsibility for their relatives.

The Weasleys had been informed that Ron's survival was contingent on the integrity of the healing spells keeping his organs functioning. They either had to find the money or accept that the spells could fail, if they choose to care for him at home. Truthfully, some of them had abandoned hope that he would ever wake up, but Fleur, George and their mum managed to persuade the rest not to give up on Ron yet.

A year after the war ended, Ginny went back to Hogwarts to sit her N.E.W.T.s. The Ministry had appointed a new Headmistress after the death of Professor McGonagall; previously a member of the Governing Board of Hogwarts, Professor Margaret Sprigmore was an unknown quantity when she assumed the reigns at Hogwarts.

She quickly made a name for herself as a staunch bureaucrat and loyal Ministry supporter, with the capacity of boring a room to tears in less than two minutes. And that was only the teachers, who had a considerably wider attention span than the students.

However, she had claws, according to the rumour among former Order members, as Professor Sprout found out to her cost when she tried to challenge Sprigmore on the exclusion of several dangerous plants from the curriculum. Pomona Sprout found herself under a disciplinary investigation and was fortunate to retain her post.

After that, even when Sprigmore had departed after a short tenure, there was little resistance among the demoralised Hogwarts staff against the general cleansing of anything that may conceivably be considered Dark on the curriculum, however wide the definition of Dark. Severus Snape would have been turning in his grave, Pomona Sprout ruminated darkly. Even if he were a traitor, at least the man had understood that you cannot fight what you have no knowledge of.

Ginny poured most of her energies into the Gryffindor Quidditch team, which was a shadow of its former self. By the end of the year, she managed to scrape together five N.E.W.T.s and a victory in the Quidditch Cup, which was enough for a contract with the Holyhead Harpies. Had things been different, this would have earned her a screeching lecture from her mother about her lack of dedication in life. As it was, they all gathered in the garden at the Burrow to celebrate.

George had invited Angelina, and their mum was giddy with the prospect of her son finally bringing a girlfriend home. Wisely, she managed to say nothing at all about Angelina's presence, except to assure her that she was very welcome and thanking her for bringing a lovely lemon tart, a contribution that made her no harm at all in Molly's eyes. No one told her it was actually from Marks and Spencer.

Andromeda Tonks and Teddy Lupin were there, too. Teddy was just old enough to walk and hence needed to be minded every second, but mercifully he fell asleep just after they started eating.

While they would never be the same as they were before the war, something fragile that looked suspiciously like happiness finally seemed to be within reach again that night.

The only discordant note was struck by Ginny. She refused to stay after dinner and disappeared to join her friends at The Three Broomsticks, where the Quidditch team had organised a leaving party for the seventh-years. It was too much of a coincidence for the party to be scheduled the very same night as the family celebration, and Charlie couldn't help raising his eyebrows at her premature exit.

Later, as he plonked himself down next to Bill under the gnarled oak by the pond with a bottle of Firewhiskey between them, he mentioned it to his brother. Bill sighed.

"I don't think anyone of us has paid nearly enough attention to what Ginny really thinks about things. At least not since she went to Hogwarts."

Charlie raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"I don't really think that's true. I know Ron felt he was getting the short shrift sometimes, and Percy – but not _Ginny_…" Speaking as a middle child, Charlie was trying very hard not to point out that the first female Weasley for generations certainly hadn't experienced any shortage of attention growing up.

"Oh, there was no lack of people looking after her! But I don't think anyone really knows what she's been feeling for a long time now…" Bill counted backwards under his breath. "You'd have been what, twenty? when she was possessed by Voldemort."

They both shuddered at the reminder.

"I wasn't that old either, but I did hear more about it. Remember when you all came to see me in Egypt? Ginny refused to talk about it. At all. Mum and dad were really concerned. The year after, they made her go and see Madam Pomfrey at Hogwarts, but I don't think she kept it up." He took another sip of Firewhiskey. "If she'd been Muggle, there would have been trauma counselling and- and I don't know what else. She was only eleven, for pity's sake!"

Charlie couldn't remember if he had ever talked to Ginny about the diary. To his shame, he only remembered trying to cheer her up by letting her join the rest of them in a game of Quidditch, or cramming her full with chocolate from Romania.

"I think that's when she stopped telling any of us what was going on with her. You know what she's like, she's always been hell-bent on doing things herself," Bill continued.

"Yeah," Charlie agreed, remembering carrying his screaming sister down the stairs when she was two years old and determined that she could make it all the way down on her own, without falling. If she hadn't fought to get to do things on her own every step of the way, she probably would have ended up entirely useless - a bit like that cousin of Harry's, who by all accounts had been spoilt completely rotten.

"And then," Bill sighed, "there was the war, and being barred from Order meetings, and not really being part of whatever Harry and Ron and Hermione were up to. So she was left at Hogwarts the last year of the war – did you ever hear many stories from her about that?" No, Charlie hadn't, except what he had heard from Neville and Luna already.

"I've wondered if it was right to leave her there that year," Charlie said; he had never mentioned his doubts to anyone else in the family before. "With Snape running the place and Death Eaters everywhere, and Voldemort flying in for a cuppa whenever he fancied..."

There were too many regrets from the war: over the estrangement from Percy, over losing track of Ron, and just not having spent enough time together before it was too late. He didn't want to rake up any more guilt than necessary, but looking at it from Ginny's point of view it did seem like a daft decision.

"Ginny insisted," Bill told him. "She would've been seventeen, so there was nothing Mum and Dad could've done to stop her either. Whatever about Hogwarts, there was no bloody chance Mum would have let her join the Order when the Ministry was hunting us down, and Ginny knew it. They had screaming matches about it. "

"I'd no idea about that."

"Well, mum was hardly going to tell you that she was threatening to put Ginny under house arrest with Auntie Muriel in her weekly letter now, was she?"

"I s'pose."

"And then Fred and Dad were killed, and Harry… D'you know Harry and Ginny were together before he left Hogwarts?"

"_What_? She was _sixteen_!" Charlie was belatedly outraged, but Bill could still make him feel like a naïve teenager with a simple chuckle.

"Calm down! They were only going out, you dolt," he explained patiently to his daft younger brother.

"Oh."

Charlie poured them another glass of whiskey, for good measure.

"But she was really in love with Harry, and he with her. I don't know if you ever noticed?" Bill asked and Charlie blushed; he had never been very good at noticing these things, even when he wasn't away in Romania. At school he had been lucky to be friends with Tonks, who would clue him in when it was patently obvious that something was going on. Good old Tonks. She hadn't been the best at reading social clues either, but she had been much better at it than Charlie was.

"I guess not – but they were. So it's hardly surprising it's been hard on Ginny, is it?" Bill asked him, and Charlie shook his head in response. "What I'm really worried about is that she's bottling it all up and won't talk to anyone. I've tried. Mum has tried, even Percy tried once – but she won't."

In the faint light, Bill looked far older than his years, and Charlie fancied that some grey hairs would have been shining among the red if it had been daylight.

Had Ron been there, Ginny might have talked to him. He wasn't, and as the years went by, the rest of them had little success. Somehow, Ginny seemed to get through it alone, but she was more brittle nowadays, quicker to take offence and she kept herself at a slight distance. She was still playing professional Quidditch, now for the Ballycastle Bats; Charlie had a vague suspicion that her choice of team had something to do with the fact that you couldn't Apparate across the Irish Sea, but he had never brought it up.

Eventually, Ginny had moved out of the Burrow, in spite of their mum's tearful protests and her brothers' entreaties, with a calm insistence that had seemed utterly unlike her old self. She brought a few boyfriends home over the years; the latest had been Seamus Finnigan, who was living in Dublin and apparently had hooked up with her again recently.

* * *

The loss of their father had been at once more pervasive and less obvious than that of Fred. Losing Fred was like losing a limb; losing Arthur had nearly caused the whole edifice to fall.

When they were growing up, Molly managed the house while Arthur seemed to be slightly detached from the rest of them, with the long hours he worked at the Ministry, his tinkering in the garage and general absent-mindedness. It wasn't until he was gone that they realised how much they relied on him, being there in the background; the steady anchor to their stormy sea.

Charlie would always be grateful that he had the last few years in the Order, and got to know his father as an adult. Before that, he hadn't fully appreciated that behind the slightly eccentric façade was a man who fought with courage and determination for his beliefs in two wars, and suffered for them in between. He was proud to be his father's son, and he knew that his father had been proud of him in return.

It helped, when anniversaries rolled around and his mother needed them all around her to get through. She was mostly the same; more anxious, which was understandable, but able to summon enough determination to carry on despite her losses. Ron's return was an unexpected stroke of grace; Molly had kept up hope for the longest time, but the last few years even she was becoming more resigned to his fate.

Percy was happier with his Audrey than he had been for a very long time. For so long, he had been shouldering all the burdens of their family to make up for his long absence. Only the last few years did he seem to realise that the only thing that mattered was that he was there now. He was still the same Percy, genuinely worried about cauldron thickness regulations and patiently toiling in a not very important position at the Ministry, but he was making an effort to avoid getting caught up in details and not seeing what was really important.

George… Well, George was never going to be the same after Fred died. Once they all accepted that, it seemed to be easier to appreciate him for who he was now. He still had the same creative genius and delight in his creations, but he would no longer effortlessly light up the mood around him. George was a father now, too – young Fred was another reminder that the war had been over for a long time.

* * *

"I think…" Charlie twisted his pint glass around on the beer mat in his seat opposite Hermione in the Marigold, in a movement reminiscent of Ron. He wasn't the kind of man who spent a lot of time analysing others, but the last few years had taken their toll on him too. Since Bill had showed him what he had let go unnoticed, he had spent a lot of time thinking about his family. It was surprisingly easy to put it all into words for Hermione. "I think the different ways we've dealt with the war probably have something to do with what was going on when we grew up."

"Bill and I both knew something was going on, especially when our uncles died," Charlie continued. "But when Voldemort fell, it was all over. Done with. We could go to Hogwarts and get on with our lives, and he didn't come back until we were grown-ups and could deal with it." He threw his head back as he was emptying his glass, and Hermione gave the barman a nod to bring out the same round again. The Marigold was quiet today; they hardly needed to have bothered with a Muffliato.

"Sometimes," Charlie continued, "I think that's why Percy couldn't deal with Voldemort coming back. He was only five when he was defeated the first time, so to Percy it was almost like a nursery tale. Not real." Charlie remembered catching a glimpse of his father coming back late at night, with spell-torn robes and blood on his face. He remembered sneaking downstairs with Bill, trying to overhear whispered conversations in the kitchen. Most of all, he remembered how he hated being dressed up and admonished to behave himself at funeral after funeral. It had been real for him, all right.

"But for us, it was always there…" Hermione nudged Charlie forward, thinking aloud.

"Yes, because of Harry, and what happened to Ginny with Riddle's diary. And then, you lot went out and fought in a war before you were even sixteen." The ill-fated battle of the Department of Mysteries. It was obvious from her pained expression that Hermione still wished that she had tried harder to stop that particular excursion.

"Yes," she agreed, clearly not wanting to return to old regrets again.

"You were all forced to take sides in an actual war, before you had a chance to work out who you really were, or what you believed in. It's not very strange that it's hard to deal with what happened, especially for those of you who were in the thick of it."

"It's no wonder we're a bit messed up, really," Hermione said pensively, presumably considering her contemporaries. She wouldn't have spent a lot of time with them since her return; Charlie thought he must know many of them better than she did nowadays, despite spending most of his time abroad.

"We're all a bit messed up after the war, Hermione. But I still think it was much harder for you young ones."

"We're not exactly teenagers anymore, you know," she corrected him.

"You're still young," Charlie scoffed. "Wait until you turn thirty, then you'll find out what it means to be old!" He smiled and the laughter lines around his eyes crinkled, but his eyes were still serious. The barman delivered one pint of Guinness and a glass of Shiraz, and they fell silent.

* * *

Afterwards, Hermione found that it didn't hurt so much that George and Ginny still wouldn't entertain the thought of meeting her.

Ever since she first noticed the profusion of redheads at King's Cross station, the Weasleys had seemed to live a charmed existence to her inexperienced eyes. Even Percy's defection had seemed bearable, compared to dispatching her own parents to Australia.

It wasn't until Ron had walked out on them during the Horcrux hunt that Harry finally told her about seeing Mrs Weasley's Boggart at Grimmauld Place, turning into one dead member of her family after another. By then, there wasn't much she and Harry still were keeping from each other; anything was usually preferable to spending another night in silence.

Somehow, it hadn't dawned on Hermione until now that the Weasleys had been extremely exposed in the war. Their power and vitality had masked how very vulnerable they were.

Maybe it was fortunate that she was the only Granger left, so neither Malfoy nor the Ministry use her parents against her.

-oOo-

* * *

**"A Wizard's Staff Has A Knob On The End" is borrowed from Terry Pratchett; it's definitely rude enough for the Weasley brothers to sing on a night out.  
**


	10. Chapter 9 - The Magic Word

**Thanks to MysticDew for all her help and support!**

* * *

**Chapter 9**

**The Magic Word**

**-oOo-**

**12PM, the 17th of April 2005 - Upper Flagley, Yorkshire **

In an attempt to court some publicity, while appearing not to do so, Draco had arranged to meet Hermione in the northern wizarding village of Upper Flagley for Sunday brunch. In the beginning, it had been a nice touch to seem to be avoiding attention, but as they weren't actually meeting solely to enjoy each others' company, it would be counter-productive to continue skulking in the shadows.

Today, he intended to make rather a splash.

In preparation of his imminent appearance on the front pages Draco was sporting flawlessly cut dark blue robes, that contrasted nicely with his hair. He winced when he spotted Hermione across the street, dressed conspicuously in Muggle clothes. Clearly, she had disregarded his owled instructions to the contrary, and he resolved to pick her up at her flat the next time instead.

"Hermione." He smiled, with some effort, and leaned forward to kiss her cheek.

"Draco. How lovely to see you," she responded, with a smile that actually reached her eyes. It left him in no doubt that she had ignored his diktat purely to annoy him.

"Likewise." Draco offered her his arm and they proceeded down the village green, towards the cluster of wizarding establishments at the far end.

"I've never been here before. It's charming." Hermione admired the lush green hills surrounding the village and the cobble-stoned streets.

"We could go for a walk later, if you're not too tired?" he suggested.

"That would be wonderful."Hermione was acting utterly unlike herself; yet there was something very familiar about her behaviour. Draco just couldn't put his finger on it.

They were received with just the right amount of fawning attention at the restaurant, The Hag's Head. Draco timed his request for a more private table expertly; half the restaurant just happened to hear him, during a lull in the conversation around a very busy table with what looked like the annual outing for the local Witches' Institute.

The WI witches were rather raucous after their third Bellini, catching their breath after laughing uproariously at some joke better not repeated. A small witch with bluish hair who couldn't be a day under 130 managed to wheeze "That's what she said!" which set them off again, but enough patrons had looked up and recognised Draco and Hermione to set off a wave of whispers and prodding elbows.

His mission accomplished, Draco placidly escorted Hermione to their seats at an unassuming table in the corner with a pleasant view of the mountains.

"This is divine!" Hermione exclaimed.

"It is rather nice," Draco drawled in response, hiding his puzzlement at her behaviour. They found themselves at an impasse, wrapped in an uncomfortable silence. Surprisingly, they were rarely short of something to talk about when they could speak freely; it was only when they had to keep the conversation suitable for public consumption that they became uncharacteristically tongue-tied.

The waiter rescued them with the menu, and for the next ten minutes they managed to debate the relative merits of scallops versus terrine de foie gras. Hermione appeared to have pulled herself together even if she still acting peculiarly, and the rest of the elegant repast was spent discussing travelling. They compared notes on Paris, Hermione waxed lyrical about New York and Draco extolled the virtues of the Amalfi coast.

For dessert, Hermione had macaroons and Draco a rather exquisite pear parfait. Using her dainty dessert fork Hermione stole several morsels from his plate, her eyes laughing as she silently dared him to complain. She wouldn't give up any of her macaroons to him in return, claiming that it was a lady's privilege to have full rights to her companion's dessert while not having to relinquish any of hers.

Draco couldn't understand what had got into her.

As the meal finally ended and they left the restaurant, they found a gaggle of reporters waiting for them outside and were momentarily blinded by flashing cameras. Draco wrapped his arm around Hermione, discretely pulling her wand hand down and out of harm's way, and smiled fulsomely for the press. As he pushed their way through the small crowd he kept shaking his head, repeating "No comment, no comment". Hermione tried to pull off a shy smile for the cameras but remained silent; Draco was simply relieved that she hadn't attacked anyone.

Eventually, they managed to shake off their followers and set off up a quiet country lane, steadily climbing the hills. Soon, the only thing they could hear was birdsong and the wind rustling the dry leaves from last year, caught in the hedges bordering the road. Draco looked around and cast a surreptitious spell to ensure no one was following them. He turned to Hermione and opened his mouth to speak, when she stopped him with an intent look and her wand in her hand.

"Animagum Revelio," she whispered, and finally gave him the nod. He was momentarily distracted.

"What was that spell for? I've never heard it before."

"If you must know, I'm checking for Animagi."

"You really have lost it, Granger. There were only seven of them in the last century, do you really think one of them would bother following us up on the moors?"

"Yes, I do." She quickly filled him in on her experiences with Rita Skeeter. Afterwards, he looked at her with something akin to admiration. It seemed to thoroughly unnerve her.

"Where's Skeeter now, then? She could be useful," Hermione asked, getting back to business, and Draco pulled himself together.

"I don't know, but I intend to find out rather quickly. Now, what the hell was it you were doing in the restaurant?"

"I had lunch, what did it look like?"

"Brunch, Granger. You had brunch. Anyway, that wasn't it. It was like you'd changed personality completely."

"Ah, yes. Did you like it?" She looked at him, wide-eyed and innocent. Granger was about as innocent as a sphinx, he thought grimly. "I tried to remember what Pansy Parkinson was like at Hogwarts. She was always all over you, so I reckoned it would bring some verisimilitude to the proceedings," she explained.

Now he remembered. Everything had been divine or wonderful with Pansy, as long as it either was expensive or something he did. And then the cow had ditched him.

"It was eerie. Please don't do it again. I'd rather people didn't get any evidence that I put you under an Imperius, thank you very much. The mere suspicion will do nicely," Draco grumbled and she looked a bit too pleased with herself.

"As you wish."

"Stop it. That bit about the desserts was a masterstroke, actually. Pansy to a tee," he admitted reluctantly.

"Thank you," she said modestly and Draco suddenly remembered his earlier grievance.

"Now tell me why you showed up in Muggle garb when I specifically told you to dress in nice robes. Like a witch," he demanded, throwing patronising into the mix too.

"Did you ever hear the saying 'you catch more flies with honey than vinegar'? No? For future reference, ordering me to do something will not work." Hermione had a mulish expression around her mouth.

"Really, because-" he started angrily.

"I don't care. If you want me to do something, you'll use the magic word."

"What?" She was so infuriating! Now what? He'd never even heard of a magic word to make witches do what you wanted. It did sound handy, though.

"Please. Please is the magic word which will open many a door for you, young Draco." She could even smile in a condescending way. Draco took a deep, shuddering breath to calm down, so they could get on with things now that they finally had some privacy.

"OK, point taken." He told himself firmly that he may as well humour her for the time being; a murder conviction would just upset his mother. "Now, I assume we'll be all over _The Prophet_ tomorrow. We have our strategy set, nothing to worry about there."

"But there is something to worry about elsewhere, I take it?"

"I think we need give them some reason to believe this isn't just two school friends reconnecting."

Hermione snorted in disbelief:

"Yes, and if they believe that I've got some shares in London Bridge to sell."

"What?" Whatever had made Draco think this woman was intelligent?

"Muggle saying, forget about it. Hang on, what do you mean?"

"Like kissing, for example," he explained, exasperated.

"We agreed we wouldn't do- do anything like that!" She looked aghast at the prospect; had Draco not been thoroughly convinced of his own good looks, it would have been rather disconcerting.

"Come on, Granger. No one will believe we're really together if we don't at least kiss in public." Surely she must have thought of that before now?

"That's not the deal we had."

"Really? This relationship is supposed to be built on our unresolved sexual tension. So far, a relationship between a house-elf and a dead fish would display more sexual tension that we have. You'll have to come up with something better than that."

"Fine! Everyone who knows me also knows that I'm not into PDA. They'll find it harder to believe I'd be snogging in public than that I've hooked up with you."

"What the hell is a PDA?" he bit back, momentarily distracted.

"Public displays of affection, and that's not the point!"

Now her voice was getting shrill. Brilliant. The last thing they needed was another shouting match. Pity they couldn't do that in public, it would go a long way to persuade the general wizarding population that there was some sort of passion between them. Draco didn't think anyone really would believe that the path to true love went through screaming rows, however.

"From what I heard, you didn't have any qualms about kissing Weasley in public anyway," he retaliated and her face went ashen. Then he remembered when that ill-fated kiss had occurred. "I'm sorry, Granger. Really. I shouldn't have brought it up."

She took a very deep breath, looking steadily at the road in front of her.

"It's all right, Malfoy," she said, in a voice that almost didn't waver. "Right," Hermione steeled herself. "One kiss. That's all we need, right?"

"OK. One kiss." He was going to have to take it; it would be no use pushing her any further right now. Hopefully, it would be sufficient to persuade someone at least; possibly, his maiden aunt in Peterborough might be taken in.

* * *

The kiss before they Apparated their separate ways made the front page of _The Daily Prophet _and_ Witch Weekly_; it even got a mention in _The Quibbler_.

They turned out pretty well in the pictures; as they broke the kiss, Hermione looked embarrassed and Draco looked smug. No one in the wizarding world would find either reaction particularly hard to believe under the circumstances.

_Upper Flagley Shenanigans – Has Malfoy Heir Ensnared Gryffindor's Golden Girl_? the front cover of _Witch Weekly_ trumpeted, above _Six of the Best – Household Spells You Can't Afford to Miss _and _This Season's New Robes – Back in Black_.

_The Daily Prophet_ showed all its usual restraint and close attention to facts, blazoning out _Interhouse Relations: Malfoy-Granger Détente Heralds Peace Dividend?_ In slightly smaller print it continued below:

_Was It Just A Kiss? See Inside For Expert Analysis And Interpretation By Our Expert, Relationship Witch Fidelma Flynn_

Hermione knew she shouldn't bother, but she still couldn't help asking her empty apartment:

"What else would it be, you utter and complete idiots? The Second Coming? A clandestine salutation used by the Secret Society of former Death Eaters and Gryffindors Know-It-Alls? Two closet Eskimos catching up?"

Never mind. The cat was out of the bag, and that was all they had wanted to achieve. She sighed, bracing herself for the inevitable Weasley eruptions. Ginny and George still refused to acknowledge her existence, and somehow she couldn't see Mrs Weasley or Bill interfering in her love life, regardless of what they may think of it. That meant that she would only have to deal with Ron and Charlie. Wait, she had forgotten about Percy; if he were in a sanctimonious mood, he would hardly be able to resist the opportunity to give her a good lecture.

* * *

There was no friendly trip down to the pub when Ron first spotted Hermione with Malfoy in _The Daily Prophet_. He couldn't shout at her properly in public.

Predictably, he Apparated over with the paper clutched in his fist to hold her to account, but completely disregarded that he ought have known that she was out collecting Potions ingredients with Luna. Kicking his heels in her apartment only served to wind Ron up further, and Hermione was greeted with an irate "About time!" when she opened the door.

For a second Hermione thought it was Malfoy. Then, when she realised that her visitor's hair was red and his robes scruffy, she resolved to tell Malfoy he had to stop coming over without warning. She shuddered to think of the pandemonium that would have ensued had Ron bumped into him here; it would be bad enough as it was.

"Ron, I've just spent more than ten hours in a bloody marsh, somewhere only midges and Dugbogs should go. Will you let me get some food before you start sticking your nose into my business, or would you rather have at it now?" He took one look at Hermione and backed off sufficiently for her to throw some soup into the microwave and horse most of it down, before he started on her again.

"I can't believe you'd meet that twat behind my back, much less actually _kiss_ him!" Ron said, with unconscious betrayal raw in his voice. Hermione desperately wanted to have this conversation some other time; preferably never. However, even if it hadn't been for Malfoy, some things needed to be said; Ron wasn't exactly going to figure them out on his own.

She made him sit down and poured them both a drink before answering. Then she took a deep breath, pushing her anger and annoyance away. It was harder to let go of the ache in her chest for things to be different, but she put that aside too.

"Ron, could you try to see things from my point of view for a minute?" He looked unconvinced, but thankfully kept quiet. "There aren't that many people left that I'm close to. My parents don't remember me." Hermione made a twisted little grimace and Ron looked at her with concern; she preferred not to contemplate what the expression on her face must be like. "There's really only you, and maybe Luna. Charlie's great and I do like Bill and Fleur, but I don't really know them that well yet."

He looked stunned; as a member of a big family, Ron had never quite grasped how small Hermione's intimate circle was. She never had the knack of making new friends easily, ever since she was a bossy child who didn't know how to stop telling people what they should do.

"I'd be a fool if I tried to let you be all things to me, wouldn't I?" she asked. Clearly he hadn't considered that before, but he wouldn't let the shadow of failure stand between them.

"It'll be fine, I promise! You know we'd be great together, you'd have a massive family then…" Ron trailed off, looking away after revealing too much of secret hopes and plans, and Hermione's heart ached.

"It would really be unfair, to both of us. I lean so much on you already-"

"You don't!" he exclaimed.

"I do, and I can see it even if you can't. It's just too much to risk, Ron."

"You wouldn't think you're a Gryffindor, listening to you talking-"

Hermione interrupted him.

"You can't be my brother, and my friend, and my lover-" She had known Ron would blush at that, further emphasising that this would have been much too much to take on. "-at the same time. I can't lose you. I can't."

That was the absolute truth; without Ron she would drift loose like a log caught by the tide, never to return to the shore. The sadness threatened to well up again, and she fell silent.

There had been times when Hermione had loved Ron like a lover should; when a casual touch had made her acutely aware of his presence, and nothing else on this earth could make her feel so alive. Ron had returned her feelings at various times, she knew that, but there had always been some excuse not to act. Lavender and his immaturity and the Horcruxes and Harry, and her tendency to over-analyse and never just let go had come between them.

There had been that one kiss during the Battle of Hogwarts, when the war was balancing on a knife-edge and they most likely either would be dead or finally, finally able to be together when it was over. Instead, Hermione was taken away by Ministry staff after the battle, and told that Ron would never wake up again.

For years, it didn't seem to matter whether the people she loved were dead or just lost to her; she had grieved for Ron and the others, but given up all hope of seeing them again. The only thing she had to cling onto was the comfort of knowing that her parents probably were happy in Australia. She had never dared trying to confirm it, held back in equal parts by the conditions for her banishment stipulated by the Ministry and her fear that her parents weren't safe and content, after all. When Malfoy appeared, Hermione hadn't really believed that he could do what he promised and raise Ron from his sleep, but she hadn't been able to pass up on the chance that he would, either.

Ron's letter had released her from her tired trot of work and dalliances and too much time spent alone, and in the beginning she had been so grateful to see him that she hadn't had time to think about what they would be to each other now.

After more than a month to think it through and consider it from every angle, Hermione thought that Malfoy probably made very little difference, when it came down to it.

The main reason Ron and she had danced around each other when they were younger was still there: the stakes were frighteningly high. Not having Harry there to mediate when they both got stubborn further served to underscore how badly it could end. Hermione thought that she had finally learnt that courage, sometimes, is to step back from the brink rather than taking the plunge, but she found it hard to put in words for Ron.

"Maybe we would've been great together, if things were different. And I understand that things … that it's only a few months since the battle for you." She did feel horrible about that; had she not been entangled with Malfoy, she never would have done this to Ron so soon. Eventually, yes, but she would have given him time to come to terms with it. "But it's been years for me, Ron. I'm just- in a different place, you know."

God, she was starting to sound like a chick-lit writer. She'd always been terrible at lying to him. Apparently, her ability to lie to her teeth to subcontractors, hotel guests and acquaintances acquired in recent years meant bugger all when it came to Ron. Mercifully, he seemed to understand the gist of it, though; he looked so sad with his eyes cast down, staring at the glass of whiskey in his hands. After a long while, he rubbed his face and sighed, and finally he looked at her with red-tinged eyes.

"I love you, Hermione, whichever way you let me. Always have, always will." Maybe that wasn't strictly accurate, but she had no doubt that he did love her now, and had for a long time.

"I love you too, Ron. Always." And for some reason, it didn't feel weird to hug each other then. Hermione clung on for dear life, relieved beyond measure to have cleared the air. The last thing Ron said before he Floo'd back to the Burrow was:

"And don't think you got out of explaining what you were doing with Malfoy! I'll be back tomorrow- Hang on. Ginny, I need to get through here, would you stop jabbering and- Right, bye Hermione!"

* * *

The following day, Ron called over for breakfast and Hermione had to explain herself over croissants and coffee. Ron had never really taken to orange juice.

"What were you doing with him? Why did you even meet up with him in the first place?" Ron was incredulous at her spending time with Malfoy voluntarily.

"I was having lu- brunch with him." Damn it, Draco's pretentiousness was rubbing off on her.

"But why?" Ron asked plaintively.

"Because he contacted me and wanted to apologise for what happened in the war."

"I find that hard to believe," he stated flatly.

"Well, he did. Think about it - he saved us at Malfoy Manor-" Hermione tried to cajole him.

"He watched you being tortured, for fuck's sake!"

"But he didn't tell Bellatrix it was Harry! We could have lost the war right there," she pointed out, forbearing from mentioning that she still had regular nightmares of writhing in pain on the immaculate Axminster in her husband's drawing room. "Anyway," she continued, "he apologised about that, and everything that happened at school."

"Yeah, right," Ron grumbled, unconvinced. "I'm sure he's been sorry ever since, just waiting for a chance to put things to right."

Hermione ignored the sarcasm and continued unabated:

"Voldemort did threaten his family, even the Wizengamot acknowledged that. Anyway, he just persuaded me to have tea with him, and we actually had a decent conversation." Ron looked revolted. "You mightn't have noticed, but I'm not exactly overrun with social invitations-"

"You know you can owl me whenever you like-"

"Yes, and it's great to have you, but you can't be my only friend."

"There's Luna, and Bill, and-"

"I know, I know. I just thought, why not? If the two of us can sit down and have a civilised conversation, that has to be progress." Ron looked like that was a step too far for him. "Then it kind of moved on from there, and I think we might-"

"STOP! For the love of Merlin, please tell me you're not about to explain how you might be fancying Malfoy! Honestly, Hermione…"

"Sorry, sorry. Well, that's how things are anyway."

Ron looked pensive for a moment.

"Remember how you asked me to see things from your point of view, last night?" he asked, and she nodded. "Well, I'd like you to do the same for me for a second. Now, I do realise that it's none of my business who you're going out with," it clearly pained him to admit as much, "so all I will say is this."

Hermione braced herself.

"Malfoy? Are you completely barking mad?" Ron's voice went up an octave in his disbelief; the floodgates had opened. "He's been nothing but a complete and utter git towards you since he was eleven," he railed, "not to mention that he took the bloody Dark Mark because he thought You-Kno- Voldemort had such capital ideas, and now you're taken in by him pretending to regret it? After his side lost the war, conveniently?"

"People change, Ron," she said as soon as she could get in a word edgewise. Hermione didn't need his disbelieving stare to feel that it was a bit feeble as defences went, and added: "I'm just giving him a chance. If he does anything at all to make me believe he hasn't changed I'll send him packing, believe me."

"I'd bloody well hope so!" Ron replied, not quite mollified by that.

"People might well treat me the same, you know. How could I deny him a chance to prove that he's different now?"

Ron grumbled a bit more, and reminded her of Malfoy's less than stellar moments at length, in a vain attempt to dissuade her.

"Right," Hermione said, when it was clear that his litany would go on for some time. She was thoroughly annoyed now, despite knowing that Ron had good reason to question her apparent infatuation with Draco. "I know you need to get it off your chest, but this ends here."

It was a low blow, but she was going to stoop to it. Maybe the Slytherin was rubbing off on her.

"I didn't spend seven bloody years in exile so I could have people telling me what to do, Ron." She could feel her voice getting a bit shrill. "It's none of your business who I'm seeing, and you can tell your brothers that too. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going out to get the papers. You can come along if you like, but you _will_ shut up about Malfoy," Hermione informed him in no uncertain tones. "Are you coming, or what?"

It was a subdued Ron who trailed after her down to the newsagent.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, Luna's reaction to Hermione's reappearance in the wizarding world and the subsequent revelation that she didn't shun Draco Malfoy like he had Spattergroit turned out to be somewhat less explosive.

It was a Monday, a few weeks after the news about her reprieve had been released by the Ministry, and Hermione had been asleep after a long weekend of late shifts. She'd had two weddings and a conference full of accountants to manage, and she needed all the rest she could get. Bleary-eyed, she dragged herself out of bed to the persistent knocking from her front door. It was only half two, and she groaned as she caught the time. She had hoped to sleep for at least another few hours, and then have a look through the Occlumency book she got in Flourish and Blotts.

Fervently, she hoped it wasn't Mrs Tomlinson's granddaughter at the door again, trying to get the neighbours to sponsor her skydiving attempt. The last time it had taken all Hermione's skills at diplomacy to extract herself without telling the cheeky bint that charity generally entailed giving other people money, not getting other people to sponsor your own harebrained exploits. She wasn't sure she would manage as well a second time, but had an excuse on her lips ready to be wheeled out when she jerked the door open.

"You really shouldn't just open the door like that, you know," Luna Lovegood informed her calmly, as if their previous conversation only had been interrupted a few minutes ago. It took Hermione several seconds to regain her composure, as Luna patiently waited on the threshold.

Luna had grown into her looks; her eyes didn't seem quite so protuberant and her eyebrows were darker, which accented her eyes nicely and made her face appear more balanced. Her blond hair was arranged in a loose chignon, albeit held up by a quill in characteristic Luna manner. She was a few inches taller than Hermione, and would have looked unexpectedly elegant in her dark blue robes if the effect hadn't been spoilt by her rather peculiar necklace, made by what looked like different-sized, old-fashioned house keys.

"Luna! Er, this is a surprise; do come in!" Hermione stammered, still only half-awake. Luna waited calmly as Hermione boiled the kettle, and mercifully didn't speak until they had sat down on the couch in the living room. Hermione was clasping her cup of tea in a death grip to warm her hands, in between taking greedy sips of it.

"I thought I'd call around, since my owls don't seem to get through to you." This was news to Hermione, and she tried to kick her sluggish brain awake. Maybe coffee would have been better.

"Really? What happens when you try to owl me?" she asked, burrowing into the cushions on the couch; it was definitely too chilly for pyjamas.

"They just come back with the letters, poor dears. Are you sure you didn't put up wards to stave off owls? I haven't seen them looking quite so dejected before, except when someone put up dislocation wards."

"Sorry, I got… someone to help me out, and they must have blocked out owls. I'll fix it." Bloody Malfoy must have been putting up wards on the apartment block without telling her.

"Oh, I wouldn't do that. People can get really weird sometimes, and you're still in the news almost every day. Just leave them up for another month or so, and things should start to calm down."

No, they almost certainly wouldn't; that was when Hermione would start her faux romance with Malfoy. She couldn't see herself escaping that wonderful experience without a few Howlers, and that was just from the people she was actually on speaking terms with. Gods knew how the nutters of the wizarding world would react.

"Thanks, I didn't think of that." Hermione cast around for what else to say; it was rather restful, not to be either manipulated or met with misplaced guilt. Luna was unperturbed by the silence and looked around the apartment curiously.

"That's nice," she said, nodding towards Hermione's wall of portraits where her parents, carefree and smiling, looked down on them, side by side with Harry and Ron. Under Harry's face, his name and the short years he had lived had been inscribed in Hermione's neat handwriting. She hadn't been allowed to see his grave before she was banished, so she had done what she could.

Ron's portrait was possibly the best likeness of them all: irrefutable evidence of all the years Hermione had spent looking at him. She had watched him with annoyance and jealousy and love, until she had been able to describe his face in detail to the street artist she had found sketching portraits at the Notting Hill market. On her days off she returned again and again, until the artist had drawn the faces as well as he would ever been able to. It hadn't been cheap, but in those days she would have taken any crumbs of comfort she could get, no matter the price.

When Ron spotted the portraits he looked quite touched, but thankfully he had just turned red and not mentioned them afterwards.

"Er, yes," Hermione managed to reply to Luna, resolving to move the portraits into her bedroom as soon as possible. She just wasn't used to having people over, much less people who knew her well enough to know the stories behind the faces. "I got the idea from you, actually," she added. "Harry told me about your room at home."

"Yes, I wondered if you did. It helps, doesn't it?" Luna answered, in her usual, simple way when most of her peers would have had no idea what to say.

Hermione felt a sudden rush of affection towards her, and stopped fretting about what to say or do for a few precious moments. It felt natural to sit in silence for a minute; Hermione didn't even recall her tea until Luna started speaking again.

"I just came by to tell you that I understand. You did what you had to do, and if the Ministry hadn't been taken over by- well, never mind that, but they gave you a sham trial. I'm sorry about that, but I'm glad you're back now."

It was oddly reminiscent of Luna's declaration to Harry that she believed that Voldemort really was back, but Hermione felt none of the awkwardness that Harry had experienced back in fifth year. Even when she was only seventeen, Luna had been a redoubtable ally and one of Hermione's few real friends.

Hermione opened her mouth to speak, fumbling for what to say, but Luna just smiled at her, and she didn't seem to need to say anything at all.

"I'm in England quite a bit these days, what with the cull on Porlocks and everything. It would be nice to meet for tea sometime, if you want?"

After she had left, Hermione regretted not finding out what Luna was doing nowadays. Those sharp robes didn't look like something you would wear trying to track down a Crumple-Horned Snorkack, so she wondered if Luna was still involved in making _The Quibbler_. It would be very interesting to see what effect a Luna with fewer imaginary creatures would have on the staid world of wizarding publishing.


	11. Ch 10 - The Prince's Tale, Interrupted

**Chapter 10**

**The Prince's Tale, Interrupted**

**-oOo-**

**11AM, the 24th of April 2005 - The Dowager House, Malfoy estate, Wiltshire**

After the war Hermione didn't think she ever would feel young again. Working at the hotel may have left her feeling frustrated, at her wit's end, disgusted, wary or simply astounded at her fellow human beings, but it had been a very long time since she had felt like a callow teenager.

Where a long list of C-list celebrities had failed, Narcissa Malfoy succeeded.

Draco had informed her that Mrs Malfoy was aware of their arrangement, but not the details thereof. Apparently, she was sworn to secrecy and under no illusion that they had any warmer feelings for each other, which was fortunate since Hermione had no intentions of keeping up the charade at home. She may have to pretend to be all over Malfoy in public, but she was damned if she was going to be polite over breakfast.

After Hermione reluctantly had agreed to Draco's proposal, they found themselves at a momentarily impasse.

Hermione refused to marry him unless he swore not to harm her, belatedly finding her instinct of self-preservation. However, the only person with magic Malfoy would even consider involving in his secret plans was his mother, and she was currently under house arrest. It was clearly out of the question to bring the exiled Hermione Granger to the Malfoy residence while it still was under Ministry surveillance.

Eventually, Hermione suggested that Mrs Malfoy could act as a Bonder through a Floo connection to some other location, and Draco got busy setting up the arrangements.

When Hermione handed him the vow she wanted him to make, Draco looked at her curiously but made no argument. Generally, she found it useless to speculate over what he really was thinking; it was usually impossible to decipher what went on behind that smooth face. Possibly, he had just been confused by receiving a printout from a computer rather than a piece of parchment.

* * *

Ostensibly, the reason Draco was bringing Hermione to the current Malfoy residence to formally met his mother was to convince the wizarding world that their whirlwind romance was gathering pace. If he was introducing his paramour to his relations after only a month of courting, he clearly had serious intentions.

The manner he chose to show them would go unappreciated by the object of his affections, since Hermione was unfamiliar with pure-blood courting protocols; regardless, his audience still expected him to observe the formalities.

His real reason was that the two women shortly would be sharing a house, and Draco was fervently hoping that they would manage to find some common ground before then. He didn't bother to ask his mother to make it easy on all of them; she either would or wouldn't, and there was nothing Draco could say to sway her. The same could probably be said for Hermione, but he decided to make the attempt anyway.

He always did have a knack for making poor choices.

-O-

* * *

"Granger?" Draco had come over to collect her in Bermondsey Street; as usual he hadn't bother to knock.

"Yes," Hermione muttered, as she stood in front of the mirror in the hall, trying to to screw in one more hairpin to keep her haphazard chignon in place.

"Please be kind to my mother." Now he had her full attention; she swung around to face him, as he carelessly thrown himself on her couch.

"She's under house arrest, and her husband is in Azkaban. Life hasn't been very easy for her, for a long time. She could be forgiven for being apprehensive about sharing a house with you in a few months' time." Draco had an uncharacteristic note in his voice – was it pleading? – and for once, his face looked raw and honest. Hermione wasn't taken in for a second.

"I won't insult your intelligence with the obvious retort to that." Triumphantly, she wedged the last pin in under her left ear, and leaned back to admire the result from the side as she continued: "She lived in the same house as Voldemort, for crying out loud. I don't think I'm that bad in comparison."

Hermione reached out for her bag, nodding towards the door to get Draco off the couch.

"For what it's worth, I'll do my best to put the past behind us. If she can do the same," she promised reluctantly, as she grabbed her keys and locked the Chubb lock from the inside. Apparently, Draco couldn't understand why she wouldn't just use a locking charm, but Hermione maintained that keys were quicker than the fiddly charms you had to cast to prevent anyone who had mastered a simple Alohomora from just walking in.

Looking extremely put-out at having to get up close to Draco in order to for him to Apparate her Side-Along to the Dower House the Malfoys currently were living in, Hermione delivered a final prediction: "I imagine we'll agree on one thing at least. All this is your fault!"

Despite what she would let on, Hermione couldn't find it in her to use his mother against him. Another only child, she was only too aware of what it was like to lose both your parents. Even if this was Draco Malfoy, she couldn't begrudge him his mother, who obviously loved him despite her faults.

Since it was her first visit, Draco brought her to the formal entrance of the house, in one of the displays of old-fashioned formality she was beginning to expect from him. Hermione was struck by how un-Malfoyesque it was; it was a handsome redbrick Queen Anne building of modest proportions surrounded by a very English garden, and it seemed incongruous that this was where the Malfoys had retreated to in their exile. For the first time, she felt something akin to enthusiasm at the prospect of abandoning her own flat.

That was before she spotted Mrs Malfoy waiting for them at the open door. Seeing Narcissa Black Malfoy through a Floo connection had in no way prepared her for the real article. Hermione betrayed no outward signs of her discomfort; fortunately she was rather better at lying, obfuscating and generally winging it through uncomfortable situations than she was the last time they met.

Then, Hermione had been writhing in pain on the floor of the drawing room at Malfoy Manor after being tortured by the woman's crazy sister. The battle surely couldn't count; it was hardly as if they had stopped the fighting and frantic running to catch up for a moment. Distantly, Hermione wondered if wizarding etiquette books covered this sort of situation; ought she hold out for an apology, or just ignore the rather large elephant in the room?

"Miss Granger, do come in. Draco, don't leave her standing out there in the wind. Come in, come in." Narcissa Malfoy met them on the threshold with outstretched hands, dressed to kill in spotless white robes in impossibly thin silk. For a second Hermione felt a stab of fear, as if she was a fly entering the spider's lair.

As could be expected, the inside was much larger than the outside.

They entered a wide hall with a black and white marble floor, like a chessboard. At the far end, French windows were open to the garden, letting in a spring breeze that rustled through the room. On Hermione's right, a dark wooden staircase led up to the second floor; on her left, a large mirror, reflecting the bowl of flowers resting on the mantelpiece, crowned a gilded fireplace.

Four closed doors, two on each side of the hall, led to the rest of the rooms on the ground floor. At Narcissa's approach, one of them opened silently. Malfoy courteously took Hermione's arm and escorted her in.

They sat down on the exquisite rococo group adorning the room. Draco was sprawled across a dainty-looking armchair, which was creaking under his weight. Hermione looked at him with trepidation, but abstained from commenting. It was his home, after all; he could break the furniture if he wanted to.

"Miss Granger, I believe I owe you an apology," was the first thing Narcissa said. It took Hermione completely by surprise. She didn't demur, only leaned forward to listen to what was coming next. Mrs Malfoy folded her hands on her pristine lap and looked down for a moment, before focusing her disconcertingly clear blue eyes on Hermione.

"The last time you were in my home, you came to harm at my sister's hands."

Involuntarily, Hermione shuddered at the memory of Bellatrix. She still woke up screaming sometimes, stuck in her memories of the longest moments she had ever endured. She had no need for a Pensieve to see the drawing room at Malfoy Manor in minute detail: Malfoy's white face and shaking hands, his father's eager look, and Narcissa's proud indifference. Narcissa had been unmoved by her screams, Hermione recalled, concerned only with regaining Voldemort's favour and saving her family from disgrace.

"I do regret what happened, and apologise for the pain you experienced," the older woman continued.

Hermione didn't believe that she was truly contrite; she had no real reason to.

Remembering the streak of insanity that seemed to run through the Blacks like a plague, Hemione could see how Sirius had been as unhinged as Bellatrix, in his own way. Undoubtedly, Azkaban had exacerbated their issues, but Lucius Malfoy had seemed as composed as ever when he had escaped from prison so it couldn't be entirely attributed to the Dementors' influence. Hermione couldn't decide whether she believed that Narcissa had escaped the instability of the Black lineage or not.

It didn't really signify, in the same way as it didn't matter if she believed that a completely sane Narcissa Malfoy ever truly would regret her actions during the war. Whether it was sincere or not, Hermione knew that she would have to accept Mrs Malfoy's apology. They would be living in the same house soon - what other choice did she have?

She wasn't exactly blameless herself.

* * *

While Hermione displayed her company manners and Narcissa gamely pretended that they merely were acquaintances with no troublesome past between them, Draco sat back and watched them. He wasn't stupid; he could see that his mother wasn't taken with Hermione's appearance or heritage, but reluctantly impressed by her intelligence. It was galling; it was as if she hadn't been listening, all those times he had complained about how unfair it was that Granger spent every second with her nose in a book.

He knew that Hermione was unlikely to trust anyone who had been on the other side of the war, unless she was given compelling reasons to do so; fortunately, Draco would settle for her cooperation. It seemed unlikely that the two women would descend into open warfare, and for that he was profoundly thankful.

His mother's apology had been a surprise; generally Malfoys set their trust in repression and saw no point in rehashing the past. Draco was forced to acknowledge that it had been a shrewd move; do-gooder Granger was unlikely to decline an offered olive branch, and if she had, she would have come off the worse for it.

It did serve to make things significantly smoother, but he was damned if he believed that Hermione would let bygones be bygones now. This older version was singularly more unforgiving that her younger self had been.

Nevertheless, it seemed as if they were heading for domestic peace, which meant that his plans suddenly were several months ahead of schedule; a most satisfactory outcome.

-O-

* * *

After the first tense meeting, Hermione gradually got used to Apparating over to the Dower House. It was situated at a tasteful distance from Malfoy Manor; far enough to be firmly out of the line of sight, but close enough to be within comfortable walking distance for indolent Malfoy widows who liked to keep an eye at their offspring while taking some fresh air.

The path to the Manor was firmly blocked by the Ministry since the confiscation of the main house, but apparently it was a pleasant walk with a view of the low, rolling fields and hills surrounding the properties.

The Dower House itself was built for Meredith Malfoy in 1706, after her husband Priscus succumbed to a virulent strain of pneumonia contracted when trying to win the annual Swedish broom race for the fifth time. In order to cheer her up (and, more importantly, improving his chances of making a suitable match, since Meredith's reputation as a virago of the highest order made even the most fearless witches falter at the prospect of sharing a house with her), her son Festus built her a dower house which had been part of the Malfoy estate ever since.

In recent years it had been occupied by tenants. As the latest residents had been the Goyles, who made a rather hurried exit following Voldemort's defeat, there had been no difficulty for the Malfoys to move in immediately following their summary expulsion from the manor proper after the Battle of Hogwarts. The actual move had been effected by their remaining house-elves, but Narcissa had joined them soon, and then Draco once he had been released.

By all accounts Meredith Malfoy, who was the reason that her husband vigorously had pursued the most distant broom-related competition he could find, would have been more likely to inspire a house like Grimmauld Place. This pleasant home with its well-worn wooden staircase and deep window sills where you could curl up with a book and while away an afternoon, letting the trees outside shelter your eyes from the sun, was the complete opposite of what Hermione had expected. Maybe time had mellowed it, softening its hard edges and turning some of the sternness still hiding under the ivy and faded brocade into something more welcoming.

Hermione's unexpected liking for the house itself was sufficient reason for her not to bother putting up a fight when Malfoy insisted on meeting there to make plans, rather than in her prosaic apartment. Moreover, arguing would have been useless; generations of Malfoy occupants had ensured that the protective enchantments around the Dower House rivalled those of the Ministry of Magic, if not Hogwarts. The risk of the Ministry eavesdropping on them there was non-existent.

It didn't prevent Malfoy from putting up a battered-looking Sneakoscope on the table in his study. The instrument looked like it had seen better days, and some of the diamonds adorning it had fallen out of their settings. In Hermione's eyes, it was still beautiful. The inside wheel seemed to be suspended in thin air, and as it turned it flickered in and out of sight. The device let off a faint hum, like a fly buzzing drowsily in the next room at the height of summer, when you are too lazy to let it out. Its foot was intricately enamelled in a floral pattern that slowly twisted itself around, as if it was moved by a breeze no one else noticed. Its worn elegance looked completely at odds with its function, but once Draco had prodded with his wand a few times he looked at it with satisfaction so it must be working.

"We shall evade detection yet another day, Granger," he drawled with customary smugness. "Did you bring those charts?"

Hermione resolved to get a dental guard; all this grinding would have her poor teeth in a state very soon. It was either that or Malfoy getting less annoying, and if he hadn't managed that during the first eight years of their acquaintance he hardly would now.

Had Draco been somebody else, this enterprise would have been fascinating; with a jumble of Muggle textbooks, wizarding tomes and Malfoy family papers they were piecing together demographic data for two centuries of wizardkind. Hermione had been reluctantly impressed by the lengths Draco had gone to in order to find information; she had certainly been surprised to see a pile of Muggle academic volumes on demographics casually shoved into a shelf near the desk.

Draco hadn't quite grasped that time moved considerably quicker in Muggle research than it did among wizards, where Archimedes still was considered an authority on Arithmancy. Hermione brought them the latest offerings on population dynamics, to replace the volumes on Malthusian population theory from the 1870's he had found somewhere, and constantly seemed to stumble across new avenues of research on the internet.

She had shamelessly badgered Draco into charging the subscription to the academic archive she needed to his Muggle credit card, and forbore from asking him who Hugh Jenkins was, or why the name reminded her of some Quidditch player or other. It seemed as if Draco did have something in common with Ron, despite his best efforts to the contrary.

In addition to more traditional methods of research, Hermione had tried to plot the decline of the wizarding population on her laptop. She knew enough about electronics and magic to avoid using the laptop in her apartment after her wards have gone up; she still remembered when Dean Thomas tried to bring his cherished Walkman with him to Hogwarts in fourth year, and the disastrous consequences that ensued. They had been picking little yellow bits of plastic out of the armchairs in the common room for weeks, and Dean had to wait until Christmas to listen to the Foo Fighters again.

Even though Hermione resorted to forcing the population figures into Excel in the decidedly Muggle environs of the Marigold, it didn't quite want to work. Her laptop would either shut down for no discernible reason at a critical juncture, or else the cells refused to line up. It was as if there was some inherent magic attached to the numbers themselves, which ought to be complete nonsense. When she mentioned it to Malfoy while mapping out her graphs on paper instead, he nodded absently as he flicked through a volume on the political impact of greying Muggle populations in Asia.

"What? Did you know about this?" she demanded.

"It appears to be a side-effect of the Statute of Secrecy. I've come across it before."

"But how? There is nothing magical about number 157 - how can it possibly crash my excel file?" Hermione complained.

"Contrary to what you appear to believe, I'm not an inexhaustible font of knowledge." Hermione bit her lip and shot him a look that should have made him cower. "I did hear rumours about it. It seems to have originated in the Department of Mysteries, as a security measure to avoid Muggles assembling too much information about us. Apparently it works like a misdirection charm."

Later, when she tried to google Hogwarts to test the extent of the protections placed on wizarding words, her laptop started throwing up demands to upgrade her anti-virus software and mysteriously distracted her until she gave up. When she remembered what it was she had tried to do, she decided that it was rather clever and that she wouldn't mind joining the Department of Mysteries one day.

The third time Hermione called over to the Dower House was one of those spring afternoons that makes you forget the drabness of November and forgive the English weather for its inconsistency. The garden was an explosion of green; foot-high flowers she never had seen before had appeared out of nowhere since last week and the sky was a glorious, never-ending blue. The French windows were open and the birds were singing loud enough to be distraction from their charts and diagrams, until Miffy appeared.

"Mistress is being ill," she said apologetically to Draco's elbow. "Miffy is been trying the smellies from the apothecary, but Mistress-"

"All right Miffy, that's enough. I'll come up," Draco said, interrupting the elf, which earned him a glare from Hermione. "If you would excuse me for a moment?" he asked her with exaggerated courtesy, ignoring her scowl.

"Yes-"

"Excellent." He left her alone in the room, fuming for no particular reason.

Thinking about Draco set her teeth on edge, so instead Hermione looked around the room for something to distract herself with. Malfoy had instilled her with a healthy respect for the protections placed on the volumes from the Malfoy library, which apparently often were particularly sensitive to Muggle-borns. She wasn't quite sure yet whether this was one of the times he actually was telling the truth or not, so she reluctantly turned away from the shelves with wizarding books.

The Muggle tomes Draco had amassed were positively antediluvian, so Hermione had no desire to waste her time on them. The mantelpiece held several mysterious-looking objects that appeared to be very old, but she didn't quite dare touching them. She admired the Sneakoscope for a few minutes, but eventually got bored with that too.

Moving restlessly around the room, she noticed part of the panel on the interior wall to the drawing room was actually a disguised door. It was cleverly hidden, but she could see the hinges. Fascinated, she tried to push it open. When it refused to budge, she cast a quick charm to ensure that all living beings in the house were still upstairs, and whispered:

"Alohomora!"

She had to stop herself from laughing out loud when it worked. It was a poor effort from a Malfoy to leave themselves open to the most common unlocking charm of them all.

The disguised door opened outwards, revealing a small room wedged into a section of the wall between the two bigger rooms where there shouldn't have been space for anything bigger than a linen cupboard.

A stone basin with runes carved around it dominated its centre. Hermione had forgotten many of the more esoteric meanings since the last time she looked at runes, but she recognised Othala, carved just like she would have drawn it with a quill, and a twisted version of a Runespoor.

The basin rested on a metal pedestal with more runes; it was obviously used as a Pensieve, but was empty at the moment. She reached behind her to push the door open further to let more light in, and then she recalled herself. With a sigh Hermione lit up the space with a Lumos instead, resolving not to slip up in again.

Shelves were towering above her, stocked with glass bottles filled with a ghost-like substance. The contents seemed to shy away from the light beaming from the tip of her wand. Neatly transcribed labels had been affixed to most bottles and the handwriting was clearly recognisable as Malfoy's.

It wasn't the sheer amount of bottles, or the time he must have spent organising them, that made her gasp. It was the legend of the first bottle that she paused to read that almost made her knock the Pensieve over, as she grabbed onto it to support her suddenly wobbly legs.

The label read _'Snape & Dumbledore, Dumbledore's study. Sep? 1991. Subject: Snape's view on Potter, Quirrel'_.

For a second Hermione was afraid that Malfoy would hear her heart beating and rush downstairs. It felt like the sound was echoing through the house. Then she curled her upper lip in disgust at how _soft_ she had become, and squared her shoulders to take stock of the situation.

She desperately needed to escape detection long enough to establish what sort of nefarious plan Malfoy could have concocted with his former mentor before his death. If Snape's tentacles extended beyond the grave, Hermione most definitely had to put a stop to it. Despite his recently acquired confidence, even a grown-up Draco Malfoy had nothing on the former Head of Slytherin.

It was quick work to unobtrusively ward the small room. She couldn't be certain that the Malfoys wouldn't be alerted to the spells she was casting, as she didn't know exactly how the protections placed on the house worked, but Hermione reckoned that she had bought herself a few precious minutes of privacy at least.

If she was discovered- Well, then there was Malfoy's Unbreakable Vow not to harm her to take comfort in. She should have time to send a Patronus to Ron at least, if the worst came to the worst.

Wasting valuable time she scanned the bottles, trying to pick out the most promising label. Hermione wasn't quite expecting one to be marked 'Evil Master Plan', but there was no harm in making sure.

_'Snape & Dumbledore, Hogwarts Grounds & Dumbledore's study. Winter? 1997. Subject: D's plan for Potter, Snape's Patronus'_

The decision was made before she was conscious of there being any choice to make at all, and the bottle flew into Hermione's hand with little regard for any spells protecting it. As she uncorked the bottle she noticed that her hands were shaking. As she poured the memory into the Pensieve, she tried to hold her hands steady to keep the precious liquid intact.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she plunged in.

This must be Hogwarts; Hermione could make out the familiar shape of the castle in the near distance. Suddenly, she was so homesick that she would have given anything to really be back there. Pushing the longing aside, she walked briskly to catch up with Dumbledore and Snape ahead of her; it was hard to make out their faces in the faint light, but there was no mistaking either of them.

As Snape turned towards Dumbledore, she started at seeing his surly countenance and sallow face clearly in the light of the setting sun.

More than seven years later, he was exactly as she remembered him, and even though Hermione knew it was only a memory she involuntarily took a step backwards. For a moment, she wanted to rail against him, how he could betray Dumbledore, who had saved him and put his trust in Snape when the rest of the wizarding world had wanted him to be justly punished.

Impotently, she heard Dumbledore telling Snape how much he trusted him. Hermione wanted to stop him, pull his beard to make him listen if she had to, to stop him from talking about Harry to this evil man who soon would betray them all. Belatedly, she remembered the purpose of this exercise and started listening instead.

_"After you have killed me, Severus-"_ Dumbledore said, and Hermione almost fell backwards.

Snape's reaction, the anger in his face when he threatened to change his mind almost failed to penetrate, but she did catch Dumbledore's reference to the promise he must have extracted from the younger man.

Hermione desperately wanted more time to think about this, to consider it, but it did make sense to her in its own twisted way. Faced with Harry and Ron's vehement certainty, she had never voiced her doubts about what had happened on top of the Astronomy Tower that night, but she had always wondered why Dumbledore had been pleading for his life, when it would have been much more like him to fight until the end.

There was no time to analyse; the memory flickered and they were suddenly in Dumbledore's office. The clock was five minutes past eleven, and she realised it must be later the same night. Dumbledore was telling Snape his secrets as he had promised earlier, and Hermione crept closer to listen.

Hearing Dumbledore putting into words what Ron, Harry and herself had worked out with increasing desperation on the run came as a relief, in a strange way.

At least she hadn't killed Harry for no purpose.

The scant consolation was dwarfed by a growing rage against her former Headmaster. Was this what his plan had been all along?

The irony of Hermione condemning Dumbledore for sending Harry to his death didn't escape her, but there was no time to dwell on it. Suddenly, Harry's mum appeared in the conversation and the truth about Severus Snape's true loyalties was revealed to her.

Stunned, Hermione watched Snape's Patronus bursting forth. Everything she thought she had known was spun around, as if she was seeing the fragments of her former certainties through a kaleidoscope, revealing shapes and patterns she had never known to look for. A new certainty settled awkwardly on top of her memories from before; Snape had been truly been loyal to Dumbledore and it had been for the sake of Harry's mother.

Afterwards, she couldn't quite remember how she left the memory, but left it she did; only to raise her head once she was out of the Pensieve to meet Draco's cold grey eyes. He looked furious; white-lipped and tight-fisted. She would almost have been afraid of him, had she had any attention left to spare him. As it was, all she managed was a shaky breath.

"I should have known you'd stick your ugly nose where it doesn't belong, Granger!" he sneered. Hermione managed to regain some control over her faculties and answered him.

"If you don't want people to see, you need to hide your- your collection a bit better, Malfoy. What were you thinking? The Ministry could walk in here at any moment!" It was probably only her insinuation that he was inept that distracted him from the main issue at hand; his pride forbade that anyone would assume that he was a simpleton.

"For your information, only Malfoy family members can see the door or enter this chamber," he said coldly. "All the Ministry would see is a poorly preserved tapestry of the beheading of Urg the Unclean."

"Well done. Now tell me what the hell you're doing with Snape's memories."

"I don't think you're in a position to demand explanations, Granger-"

"Oh, come off it, Malfoy. You can't touch me and you know it, so quit the posturing," she said in exasperation, before returning to the essence of the matter. "You're the only person in the world who knows that Severus Snape was loyal to Dumbledore. If there's anyone who owes an explanation, that'd be you!" Hermione was almost screeching.

"You were nothing but a constant annoyance to him when he was alive, Granger. What do you care?" he snarled between clenched teeth. She blinked in surprise.

"What do you mean? Of course I care! He didn't even like Harry, and he risked everything to save him…"

"Unlike your precious Dumbledore, then?" Draco managed to divert his anger into a gibe instead; apparently he was well aware of which memory she had viewed and her likely reaction to Harry being regarded as a sacrificial lamb by his adored Headmaster.

"Yes." Hermione refused to take the bait; sometimes she thought Draco forgot that it had been seven years since he had known her at school. "Why have you kept this secret?" she demanded in even tones that made it clear that she had no intention of letting go. "Pensieve memories are admissible as evidence in the Wizengamot. His name could be cleared."

"Don't be so stupid, Granger," Draco ground out. "What do you think the reaction of the Wizengamot would be if I walked in with the memories, demanding a posthumous reprieve for Dumbledore's murderer? I'd be locked up immediately."

"Don't you care that everything good Snape ever did is locked up in your linen closet?"

"Of course I bloody care!" For once, Draco seemed to be discarding his carefully polished surface. "The man saved me, he saved my whole family! I will clear his name if it's the last thing I do, but it'll have to wait for the moment!" Clearly regretting his uncharacteristic outburst already, he added in more sedate tones: "I think he, of all people, would have understood that this requires careful planning."

"Good. Then we're in agreement. Now, which is the next memory I should see?"

"I don't think you understand. You won't see any more memories; you will in fact forget that this room even exists."

"I don't think so, Malfoy. Think of the symbolism; it will be much more effective if I'm fighting to restore Snape's reputation too. I could write a book, actually-"

"Now listen here! If there is anything that would make Severus Snape turn over in his grave, it would be the though of you putting your grubby little hands all over his memories-"

"Do you want his name to be cleared this century or not? I'm starting to wonder…"

* * *

Dejectedly, Draco remembered that there was no stopping Hermione when she was on a mission for justice; there never had been. He managed to steer her away from some of the more personal memories that Snape had clearly intended for Draco, but it was useless to resist the general thrust of her attack.

She was, of course, entirely correct. It would take decades for Draco to be sufficiently rehabilitated in the eyes of society to risk challenging the universal condemnation of Snape as a traitor and murderer, but Hermione could get started today.

She would probably be better at it then he would be, too, Draco surly acknowledged to himself as Hermione was submerged in the Pensieve again. Fighting against injustice didn't exactly come naturally to a Malfoy.

-oOo-

* * *

******The Dumbledore quote in italics is from 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'.**

**Thank you so much for every review, favourite or follow - it truly makes my day! **


	12. Ch 11 - A Slow March Towards The Light

**Thanks to my wonderful beta MysticDew for all her help!**

* * *

**Chapter 11**

**A Slow March Towards The Light**

**-oOo-**

**1.30 AM, the 2nd of May 1998 - The Hogwarts dungeons, Scotland**

Draco had fled the confusion of the Entrance Hall and set out for the dungeons instinctively. He knew this part of the castle like the back of his hand, and the further he descended, the more distant the frenzy of the fighting became. Wandless, he felt completely powerless in the melee; he was still reeling from losing of Crabbe to the flames, not to mention nearly being killed himself.

Most of all, Draco wanted the battle just to stop for a moment, so he could get a chance to catch his breath, take stock of the situation and figure out what to do next.

He tried to stop the blood flowing from his nose with a dirty handkerchief. It had been stuffed into his pocket this morning by the house-elf tending to the Slytherins; it seemed inconceivable now that this inferno had started out as a normal day at Hogwarts.

Suddenly someone grabbed him from behind, stifling his surprised yell with a gloved hand as they pushed him up against the wall. Death Eater robes and strands of almost white hair escaping from the hood; Draco found himself looking at his father's face. One eye was obscured by swelling and for those in the know, like Draco, little telltale signs like the stubborn twitch around his eyes told the story with no need for words. Lucius had the unmistakable look of someone who had been on the receiving end of Bellatrix' Cruciatus for too long.

"Draco, thank Merlin you're safe." Lucius never bothered with details, like Draco's bloody nose; his son was obviously largely unharmed and he appeared to sag slightly in relief.

"Father." They were not a demonstrative family, and actual physical contact was usually administered by Narcissa, her husband and son manfully submitting to her tender offices while maintaining a stoic attitude.

Afterwards, Draco regretted not having embraced his father in this one moment when such a liberty would have been permissible, possibly even welcome.

"Is mother safe?" Draco asked, suddenly fearful.

"Yes, yes, she is; she is not fighting. She is waiting in the Forbidden Forest. Come with me, we must get you out of here." Hurriedly, they turned around, moving down forgotten secret passages father and son both knew like they knew the halls of Malfoy Manor. Draco was surprised that his father remembered the layout of Hogwarts so well, twenty-five years on; maybe it was true that Slytherins never forgot a secret.

Apparently, Lucius had acquired a wand from someone. It was recalcitrant and battle-worn, but still hanging together; rather like the Malfoys. As they attempted the passage across the grounds towards the Forbidden Forest, he managed to cast a Disillusionment Charm over Draco and himself.

Flames were licking the horizon in the direction of Hogsmeade, and an eerie stillness laid over Hogwarts. After about a third of the way, his father stopped abruptly and Draco almost crashed into him. He had enough sense to hold his tongue as he saw the familiar shape of the Dark Lord landing on the Hogwarts lawn, gently hitting the ground with nary a stumble. He appeared to be coming from Hogsmeade, and was followed by a cage that must be holding Nagini; Draco could barely make out endless curves of softly gleaming scales inside it.

In clear relief against the burning sky, he saw the reptile's head protruding through the bars of the cage, turning towards its master. The Dark Lord set out towards the mouth of the forest, seamlessly skimming the ground in a way that had nothing in common with the gait of an ordinary human being.

The distant fires were reflected in a dark liquid dripping from Nagini's mouth and Lucius sighed softly.

"So you too have fallen, Severus…" he said, almost in lament.

"What?" Wildly, Draco looked around to make sure that they're weren't in the firing line of anyone right at this moment, and then turned back towards his father. "What do you mean? Is Snape there, in the cage?"

The night air rippled as his father turned to face him, his voice suddenly nearer in the darkness. They were hidden under the shadow of Hogwarts, and there was little light here.

"I very much fear that the blood on Nagini's teeth belongs to Severus. The Dark Lord asked me to find him and send him to the Shrieking Shack in Hogsmeade." Lucius appeared to swallow, suddenly hoarse. "I heard the Dark Lord talking to Nagini as I left. It is unlikely that Severus still is among the living."

Draco couldn't believe it.

When Pansy and most of the other Slytherins had escaped the school before the fighting started, he had been relieved to see them out of harm's way. He knew enough about basic human reactions to understand that he probably still was in shock from seeing Crabbe die in front of him, but had done his best to find Goyle before retreating to the dungeons. That whole interminable night, Draco had worried about the fate of his parents.

Snape was the only person he cared for that it never entered his head to be concerned about. His old Head of House had always seemed impervious to danger and stood high in the Dark Lord's favour. Even when his father had lost his aura of invulnerability in Draco's eyes, Snape remained untouchable, as he had always been.

When Draco finally had realised that he was in far too deep, when the true extent of his failure as a Death Eater was laid bare before him, it had been Snape who saved him. It was unfathomable that the Dark Lord could have turned against the most exalted of his followers.

"We have to go to him!" He would have tugged his father's sleeve, the way he used to do when he was a little boy and hadn't yet been schooled to behave like a Malfoy, had he been able to see it in the dark.

"No," his father said, with sadness and a terrible finality. "We must go to the Dark Lord, so he can see that you're fighting on his side. It is the only way, Draco."

"But-" He was interrupted by voices coming from the direction of the Whomping Willow, behind them. They both stiffened and listened, incredulously, to a female voice whispering only just loud enough for them to hear:

"Harry, Ron, quick now! Here, take one each. Let's go! And remember the fangs!" There was a rustling sound. Two brooms, and then a third which seemed to be cut in half, soared through the air past them, towards the bobbing cage still visible at the edge of the forest.

Granger's bushy hair was unmistakable, and even Lucius could recognise Weasley in the faint moonlight. He was raising the half-broken wand towards the shape that must be Potter, finally seeing a way to redemption in his master's eyes, when Draco forced his hand down by hanging all his own weight on the arm holding the wand.

"Father, you can't! Potter saved my life twice tonight!" The brief window of opportunity passed, and the figures on the brooms were lost in the shadows as they accelerated.

"Fool!" his father spat, but there was nothing to be done. Draco's thoughts had already returned to more pressing matters.

"Quick! If we can get to the Shrieking Shack-"

"The only place we're going is to the Dark Lord's side-" They were both interrupted by an inhuman scream from the forest, sounding like a soul in torment.

"Come quick, we must go!" Lucius stretched out his hand where he thought Draco was, but he had already moved and was crashing into his father, hands grappling for purchase. He quickly found what he was looking for and snatched the precious wand out of Lucius' hand.

"Sorry, father – I'll join you in just a minute! Please stay here, I just have to check-"

A loud crack announced that Lucius was alone.

* * *

It was only after he had Apparated that Draco remembered that it shouldn't have been possible. The ancient wards still seemed to be clinging to the air, slowing his progress and almost pulling him back, like he had stepped in treacle. With a sharp snap he felt the cords pulling him back to Hogwarts breaking, and suddenly he was standing in front of the Shrieking Shack.

Despite his desperate hurry, he tried to be careful as he stormed towards the door; the last thing he needed was to run into someone the Dark Lord had sent there to tidy up. He almost turned back at the thought, but something inside him propelled him forward; it was as much fear of what awaited him in the Forbidden Forest as concern for Snape.

There was no need to search the house; he simply followed the trail of blood into what once must have been a sitting room. The first thing Draco saw was Snape's familiar dragon hide boots.

He rushed to his mentor and protector's side, only to see that it was too late. Too many people had died before his eyes for him not to know the signs, and no one would be able to survive that amount of bloodshed.

With a gentleness that surprised even himself, Draco bent down to softly brush the blood-tangled hair from the pale face beneath him. He got the shock of his life when Snape emitted a sound like water guzzling down a pipe. Draco quickly recovered his balance and fell to his knees on the floor next to Snape's immobile body, racking his brains for any healing spells he could remember.

"It'll be all right, it'll be all right, it'll be OK," he mumbled, as much for his own benefit as for Snape's. Had he been more comfortable with expressing emotions he might have tried for something more personal, but he was busy trying not to throw up as it was.

Snape's dark eyes glittered in the faint light, before his whole body jerked in a spasm.

As in a dream, Draco cast spell after spell, trying to stem the flow of blood from Snape's neck with any means possible, before he realised that it was useless. Noticing the patches of a silvery blue liquid around Snape's head, it occurred to him that he knew what the liquid was, but his mind was unable to take it in.

He was busy repeating to himself that this couldn't be, even as he realised that it was true. In an uncharacteristically tender gesture, Draco closed the eyes of Severus Snape, Potions Master, Headmaster of Hogwarts, and the right hand of the Dark Lord.

Seeing the glint in the familiar dark eyes disappear seemed to release Draco back to the world of the living.

Knowing that since it came from Snape, it would be important, he conjured a glass container and summoned all of the remaining drops of memories into it. After casting one more glance at Snape's face, as hard and unforgiving in death as it had been in life, Draco swallowed the wild sob that wanted to escape and Apparated back to Hogwarts and the rest of his life, however short it may be.

* * *

It would take Draco years to decipher the memories.

First, he had no time to think of them at all, since he Apparated right back into the conclusion of the battle. The remnants of the wards were trickier to negotiate on the way back, and he landed closer to the Quidditch pitch than he had intended to. As he arrived a wave of fighters was spilling out from the castle, mixing with Aurors and wizards in Ministry garb arriving through the front gate and the Dark Lord's forces welling out from the Forbidden Forest.

All of them converged on the large open space where he last had seen his father.

Through some miracle Draco managed to hold on to the small glass jar as the long night ended, and he stowed it into a safe place as soon as he was out of Hogwarts. That night he escaped the attentions of the Ministry, along with his mother; his father wasn't as fortunate.

In fact, the last moment Draco had with his father in private was on that field outside Hogwarts where he abandoned Lucius to chase after Snape on a fool's errand.

When Draco finally remembered the memories, after the endless trials and his father being sent back to Azkaban and his mother's nervous breakdown and the loss of the Manor, he had no Pensieve to watch them in.

It took another six months to cajole the Ministry into allowing him to procure one. He had to stoop to a combination of the traditional bribes and vague references to his mother's precarious health, hinting at the unfortunate taint of insanity that clung to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. Fortunately, Draco found a Ministry official who was slightly impressed by his impeccable pure-blood ancestry, and whom he could sway with his aristocratic manners. Otherwise, he could have harmed their reputation irretrievably; it was extremely fortunate that Mr Dearborn seemed to regard unstable mental health as a mark of pure-blood distinction.

The first time Draco attempted to view the memories, it was impossible to make sense of what he was seeing in the jumble of long-lost places and moments. Images of children in some horrid Muggle neighbourhood were intermingled with scenes from Hogwarts and glimpses of Dumbledore and the Dark Lord. As soon as Draco saw that all too familiar reptilian face he threw himself out of the Pensieve and ended up in an undignified heap on the floor, causing his mother to dispatch a house-elf to check on him. He almost gave up the memories as a bad job, but frankly he was bored, and the short glimpse of what unmistakably had been Snape as a student at Hogwarts had been fascinating.

It had never occurred to Draco before to wonder what Snape had been like when he was young. The Potions Master had always been there, as unchangeable as Hogwarts itself: a brooding, vaguely benevolent presence whom you minded, but didn't fear unless you had incurred his displeasure.

Even after Draco had been branded with the Dark Mark and seen Snape the Death Eater in action, he never really wondered why Snape had pleaded his allegiance to the Dark Lord in the first place. Whether they were exercised about blood purity or not, it had seemed like a logical thing to do for any wizard from their circles who wanted influence and power.

At a time when Draco desperately needed distraction from the hopelessness of his own situation, a glimpse of a younger Snape, persecuted by Gryffindors but yet with what apparently was more than a fleeting interest in Mudbloods, was an interesting puzzle. It was a useful diversion from an unsympathetic Ministry and his ailing mother.

Draco tried not to think too much about his father; he didn't quite know where to start.

Separating the brief flashes of memory from each other and trying to figure out which of them belonged together was painfully tedious work. It did have unexpected benefits; after a few weeks, Draco was no longer startled by finding himself face to face with either Dumbledore or the Dark Lord. By then, he was more interested in determining the season and the time of the day, which was often a very difficult proposition. The first time he cursed the Dark Lord for his propensity for meeting at night he was surprised not to feel a twinge in his Dark Mark, something to punish him for his impertinence. There was nothing.

For as long as possible, Draco held off drawing the logical conclusion of what he saw in the memories. However, he was eventually forced to acknowledge to himself that Snape had known that Dumbledore was dying, and Dumbledore knew that he knew. It turned murder into euthanasia, which meant that Snape's true loyalties were by no means certain, and it left Draco reeling.

Had he abandoned his father to save a traitor who betrayed them all? Draco didn't understand anything, but he felt the desertion keenly. Snape had always looked out for him and protected him; had it all been a lie?

Sitting on the floor in the book room in the Dower house, leaning against his Pensieve, Draco finally gave in.

Nothing made sense in the world anymore.

Rather than dazzling wizarding society with his daring deeds after Hogwarts (he had never been quite certain of what he wanted to achieve, but it was sure to be impressive), acknowledged as an equal by his proud parents, Draco's life was in tatters.

His father was in prison, and it was a significant achievement for his mother if she managed to get dressed in the morning, rather than remaining in bed all day. None of the pure-blood girls he should have been able to charm effortlessly would even acknowledge him in public. The Dark Lord had turned out to be a vengeful maniac with no regard for his followers, rather than the saviour of the wizarding world. Snape had been a spy for the Order of the Phoenix for almost as long as Draco had been alive, and had deceived the Malfoys along with everyone else.

As it struck Draco that he probably was the only person alive in the world who knew Snape's true loyalties, it finally occurred to him to wonder why Snape had given the memories to Draco, as he laid dying on the dirty floor in the Shrieking Shack.

Snape had known Draco since he was a little boy; if he was sufficiently aware to bleed memories without a spell he must have recognised Draco's voice. There must be something, some message meant for him, an apology; _something_ that would explain why. He had known Snape well enough to understand that he usually had numerous reasons to do what he did; he was the least impulsive person Draco had ever met.

So where was the damned reason?

Unusually for a pure-blood wizard, Draco had a rather logical mind. He was sufficiently influenced by his upbringing to fail to draw the logical conclusion about the validity of his prejudices, despite having Granger's excellence shoved in his face for six years, but left to his own devices he was quite capable of following a reasoned argument through.

The information he gleaned from the memories revealed that Snape had been truly loyal to Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix. The reason why Snape had betrayed the Dark Lord was his love of Potter's Mudblood mother; a love strong enough to ensure his loyalty even after her death. Dumbledore had also made it abundantly clear that Potter would have to die in order for the Dark Lord to be defeated.

That Dumbledore and Snape also had been scheming to save Draco, even as the Dark Lord was toying with him to punish his parents, he set aside for later.

If Draco had carried the memories to the Dark Lord on the night of the battle, it was possible that Voldemort would have won by keeping Potter alive. A victorious, living Potter would have carried the wizarding world before him. With a fragment of the Dark Lord's soul inside him, Draco wondered how long it would have taken for Voldemort to rise again. It was inconceivable that it could have been Snape's intention to ensure the Dark Lord's ultimate triumph. Instead, Snape must either have expected the battle to be over by the time Draco saw the memories, or for Draco to go to Potter with the information instead.

Either way, Snape had made a rather large assumption that Draco's loyalties would lie with his side rather than with the Dark Lord. Draco couldn't decide what to think about that, so he stowed the memories away and tried to find something else to occupy his time.

As he scooped up the final memory from the Pensieve another idea occurred to him. Draco would bet his last Knut that Granger had figured out that the Dark Lord's soul was stuck in Potter, and that was why she had killed him so spectacularly. She must have known; if he knew anything at all about her and Potter, it had been the Mudblood who came up with the plan.

* * *

It was only as Draco slowly came to realise that, in all likelihood, they would all still be alive tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, that it dawned on him that the war truly was over. It also became clear to him that it easily could have ended much, much worse.

Unbidden, a long-forgotten phrase came to him, straight from the Norman church down in the village where he had dangled his short legs in the pew while his mother listened to the sermon of a Sunday. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." He felt vaguely ashamed that Potter had bested him at the end, finally ridding them all of Voldemort.

Draco had finally decided that it had been a good thing, regardless of the outcome of the end of the war for his family. Another year of being punished by Voldemort for his father's failures, and they may all have been dead.

At Hogwarts, Blaise Zabini had bandied about the phrase "I'm a lover, not a fighter" when quizzed on his loyalties, refusing to pick a side. Although Draco despised the casual wording, he started to understand what Blaise had meant. Draco was no murderer, and that would eventually have got him killed as a Death Eater.

* * *

Much later, after Draco had picked up _Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy_ in order to determine if a certain Ministry official was a distant relation (in the vain hope that a slightly smaller bribe would be necessary in that case), he would return to the memories.

When searching through the book, his attention had been captured by the Peverells and then the Potters, and then he found a litany of names: Black, Crouch, Devindell, Eames... all extinct pure-blood families.

Some he recognised from his own family tree, whose continued existence now was entirely dependent on his own capacity to procreate with a suitable partner. More families seemed to be extinct than existent; ironically, even Potter had brought an illustrious line to an end.

When delving into the people he had known, scrutinising their bloodlines, Draco realised that many had hid their Muggle heritage during the war. Out of all the people in his year at school, only fourteen had actually been true pure-bloods. Fourteen…

Concerned, he dug up old class lists, diaries, genealogies and notes from what remained of the Malfoy library, and laboriously pieced together the decline of the pure-blood dynasties in particular and wizarding kind in general. Draco chartered the devastating influence of the three wizarding wars and two Muggle wars during the 20th century.

When he came to the year Snape was born, he could no longer take refuge in the numbers. From the Pensieve, he remembered that Snape hadn't been a pure-blood, as everyone always had assumed; neither was the Dark Lord. At the time, he had pushed the knowledge to one side, not knowing what to do with it and vaguely hoping that ignoring it would make it less ignoble to unwittingly have taken the Dark Mark from a half-blood.

Now, he didn't know what to think.

Muggles were contemptible, but their sheer numbers scared him. Looking at his neat Arithmancy calculations, they were threatening to swallow his own world in a few short generations. Simultaneously intrigued and disgusted with himself, Draco had procured some texts on population theory from the Muggle world. There was nothing produced by wizards that even came close to what he needed.

The numbers were unambiguous, his own neat handwriting mocking him from the parchment; it was not possible to sustain a pure-blood society with the current population. Voldemort had done more to destroy them than anyone else.

He couldn't talk to his mother about it; it would upset her, and she didn't need more things to upset her than she already had. He wished he had someone to talk to. More than anything, Draco wished he could have talked to Snape.

-oOo-

* * *

**10AM, the 14th of May 2005 – Maybury Grove, Guildford Road, Woking, Surrey**

All morning, Hermione had been wondering what got Ron's knickers in a twist. They were sitting at the kitchen table at the Burrow, after a long and haphazard breakfast. Despite having consumed industrial quantities of eggs and sausages, Ron still looked like he was about to burst forth from the edge of his seat at any moment. If he didn't stop nudging the table with his leg every few seconds, Hermione was about to thump him.

"We should go and see the Dursleys," he blurted out suddenly.

"Oh." Oh, shite.

Hermione would rather meet up with her father-in-law for a leisurely lunch or go back to the Wizengamot for another trial, but she couldn't argue with him. She remembered well enough what Harry had asked them to do, now that Ron had brought it up.

"Do you want to go today, then?" she asked peevishly; today was supposed to feature defensive spells, not the worst relatives in Britain.

"Might as well. I got the address off'f Fleur, she knows someone in the Ministry."

"Don't they live in Privet Drive anymore?" As soon as the question had slipped out, Hermione admonished herself for her stupidity. Of course they wouldn't have returned after the war: if anything remained of the neat suburban home she remembered, it had probably been turned into a Harry Potter museum by now.

"No, or at least I assume they don't. I only got Dudley's address, figured we could start with him and see." Since Dudley had actually acted like a human being the last time she heard about him, despite all expectations to the contrary, Hermione was happy to go along with Ron's suggestion and put off a reunion with Mr and Mrs Dursley indefinitely.

In a much too short space of time, they found themselves crammed into a rental car, having ruled out Apparition and other magical means of transportation. Hermione was navigating the busy streets of London with trepidation. Ron wasn't much help; he didn't quite grasp that the car didn't drive itself by magic, or that you couldn't just go down the bus lane instead of waiting for the lights to turn green. Fortunately he discovered the car radio as they were crawling through Clapham, and it kept him occupied until they were well into Surrey.

"Look at that car in front of us! I bet you I can-"

"Ron, _put your wand down_! I told you not to use magic in the car, didn't I?"

"Come on, Hermione! I just want to-"

"No! What did I tell you about the GPS?" She didn't even need to look at Ron to know that he was doing an excellent impersonation of someone who never had heard of the disastrous consequences of mixing Muggle electronics and magic. "That box there tells me where to go. If you mess it up, it'll be you who'll be asking people for directions when we get lost. Not me."

"All right, all right." Ron looked around the interior of the Ford Fiesta, without finding anything of interest. "Are we there yet?"

Hermione rolled her eyes.

"Can you last another ten minutes? We'll get some coffee in Woking before we go looking for _Dudders_." Ron spluttered in incoherent protest. "Or tea," Hermione sighed at his alarmed expression. "Of course you can get tea instead. Honestly, Ron. We're still in England, you know."

Dudley Jones, formerly known as Dudley Dursley, was currently residing in a small apartment complex on the outskirts of Woking. As Hermione pulled up outside the nondescript seventies brick building, she was almost hoping that he would be at home so they could get this over with. Otherwise, they might be stuck here waiting for him all day.

Ron and Hermione had agreed that it was best not to contact Dudley in advance; their appearance was unlikely to be a pleasant surprise, so it was better just to turn up.

When he rang the doorbell next to number 217, Ron's face had the same expression of put upon virtuousness as he used to wear when he was de-gnoming the garden at the Burrow or doing his long-neglected Charms homework.

There was no answer; perhaps Dudley had better things to do on a sunny Saturday morning than hang around his apartment. They retreated to the car.

* * *

Every last drop of Hermione's coffee had long been consumed and she was uneasily pondering the prospect of finding a bathroom in the vicinity, when Ron viciously dug his elbow into her.

"Ron, stop it!" Then she saw the tall, blond man striding past the car, carrying an abundance of grocery bags with apparent ease.

"Is it him?"

"How would I know?" She squinted, trying to remember what Vernon Dursley had looked like. "I think so, but I'm not sure-" Neither of them got out of the car before the man disappeared into the apartment block.

"I suppose this means we have to try again," Ron said, resignation evident in his voice. Selflessly, he volunteered to ring the doorbell a second time; Hermione was happy to let him at it. Her distaste for the Dursleys hadn't been tempered by time.

It was no longer a mystery to Hermione why Dumbledore had kept her parents as far away from the Dursleys as possible, to the extent of extracting a promise from them not to invite Harry to stay with them during the school holidays. If the Grangers had been aware of his true circumstances, Harry would have been taken into care faster than you could say 'child at risk'. Apparently, the importance of preserving the protection provided by the bond of blood had overridden every other concern in Dumbledore's eyes. No other adult had been in possession of all the facts; Harry, who hardly knew what constituted 'normal' in any case, had no one to tell.

By the time Hermione realised that Harry should have been removed from the Dursleys post haste, it hardly mattered anymore. She never told him, not even when they were on the run and talked about almost everything else that ever happened to them. What purpose would it have served to rake it up again, years after it would have made a difference?

"Hello? Dudley?"

_"Yeah. Who is it?" _the intercom rasped.

"Two old friends of your cousin's. Can we come up?" There was a click and Ron pushed the door open. They rode the lift to flat 217 on the second floor in silence. The door at the end of the hall was open; before she walked in, Hermione reached for the wand in her sleeve, just to make sure it was still there.

Dudley made them tea and even produced a plate with Jaffa cakes. Hermione and Ron sat uncomfortably on his leather couch, taking in the gigantic television set and the sparsely furnished sitting room, with some mysterious-looking training equipment in one corner. Clearly, Dudley didn't go in much for home decorating.

Once their host had made himself a cup of tea too, he sat down on the chair facing them. Hermione couldn't find much of the boy she vaguely recalled in the man before her. Dudley looked well enough; he had obviously kept up with his training routine, and while he certainly wasn't her cup of tea she could see how some people might find him attractive, despite the too-narrow set of his eyes.

"You're Ron and - and Hermione, right?" Dudley said unexpectedly.

"Yeah," Ron answered. No one quite knew what to say next.

"Do you know-" Hermione took a deep breath. "Did anyone tell you what happened in the war?" She didn't bother to clarify which one; Dudley would have to be even thicker than he was as an eleven-year-old to think she meant the one in Afghanistan.

"I know Harry's dead, if that's what you mean."

"He-" Ron closed his eyes for a moment, uncharacteristically subdued, before looking straight at Dudley. "He wanted us to pass on a message to you."

"And you haven't bothered until now, seven years later?"

"It's not like that," Hermione broke in. She had been afraid this would come up, but it wouldn't have been fair to make Ron go here on his own. "We couldn't come until now."

"I though the war finished when Harry died," Dudley said, brow furrowed in what appeared to be an unusual effort at intellectual engagement.

"It was. It's just that- Things happened to me and Ron at the end of the war, and we haven't been able to get here until now. I'm sorry, but there really wasn't anything we could do about it," she said matter-of-factly.

Ron stepped in, going straight to the point of their visit before Hermione could tie herself in knots.

"Harry just wanted you to know that, well- He was glad the two of you got a proper goodbye, in the end. And he wanted to wish you all the best in life."

It wasn't much for two boys that grew up together, but in the circumstances Harry had perhaps been too generous. The knowledge that Dudley Dursley sat here, alive and well and presumably happy, when Harry was sharing his parents' grave in Godric's Hollow burnt in Hermione's chest. She felt the bile rising in her throat. Ron's words seemed to strike a chord with Dudley, however, and she thought his eyes looked a little more watery than usual.

"Where you there, at the end?" he asked suddenly. They both nodded. "Was it- How did he die? Mr Diggle never told us…"

Hermione rose abruptly from the couch, leaving Ron to tell Dudley exactly what happened to his cousin. She didn't stop walking until she was at the car.

* * *

Hermione was reading the newest edition of _Hogwarts, A History_, trying to spot any revisions, when Ron opened the door on the passenger side. He landed heavily on the seat, making the whole car shake with his weight. The suspension groaned defiantly in protest.

"Done?" she asked.

"Yeah. He says he'll talk to his parents. Apparently they've been busy pretending that Harry never existed for the last seven years, so I don't think they'll be too pleased with the reminder." Even if it was unspoken, their mutual hope that the Dursleys would refuse to see anyone associated with the wizarding world was almost tangible in the stifling heat of the car.

"Dudley seems to have turned out better than expected."

"Yeah. If I didn't know who he was, I'd think he's a decent enough sort," Ron admitted. "Bit hard to forget he used to use Harry as a punching-bag, though."

"Yes," Hermione agreed absently, as she tried to pull out into the busy traffic to get back on the main road back to London. She reserved most of her ire for Mr and Mrs Dursley, but despite his amazing turnaround, Dudley couldn't get away by blaming everything on his parents.

One way or the other, you were responsible for what you did, no matter how hard you tried to justify it.

"Here, can't we get some ice-cream before we go back? I'm starving!" Ron asked, just as she narrowly avoided an oncoming lorry.

-oOo**-**

* * *

**This chapter ****was where **this whole story started; what would have happened if Harry didn't yield to his impulse to go to Snape as he was dying, and instead carried on without knowing Dumbledore's last instructions? 

**A split-second decision, and everything would be different...  
**


	13. Chapter 12 - A Nest Of Vipers

**Thanks, as always, to MysticDew for being an amazing beta!**

* * *

**Chapter 12**

**A Nest Of Vipers**

**-oOo-**

**3PM, the 20th of May 2005 - The Dower House, Wiltshire**

Ever since Hermione found Draco waiting in her apartment, it had been obvious that something about him had changed since their last encounter at Hogwarts. Until now, the path from the wavering boy who half-heartedly fought in the battle of Hogwarts to this implacable man had been a mystery to her.

Hermione's discovery of Snape's memories and Draco's much abridged account of how he had acquired and deciphered them did much to establish some sort of trust between them. Here, at last, was a plausible explanation for his volte-face after the war. Almost the only teacher he had any liking for at Hogwarts had been Snape, and conversely, if there was any of his students Snape had actually liked it probably was Draco.

After finally realising the lengths Snape had gone to in order to protected Harry, whom he had loathed, it didn't seem so strange to Hermione that Snape could have penetrated Draco's armour of self-pity and inability and forced him to see beyond the prejudices he had been steeped in since birth; he was possibly the only person Draco actually would have listened to.

Hermione still wasn't entirely convinced of Draco's good faith, but it was a beginning; of what, she wasn't quite sure yet.

* * *

Draco was equally unsettled and reassured by Hermione knowing one of his secrets.

There was no denying that having her on his side was a considerable improvement for his prospects of eventual success. Hermione was like a giant on the rampage when she had a purpose; all Gryffindor determination and sheer grit as she charged ahead, leaving opponents sidelined in her wake.

At the same time, Draco found it unnerving that she knew so much about him. The last thing he wanted was for her to expose the workings of what she no doubt would call his soul to the bright light of the day. Instead, he decided to distract her with his plans for destabilising the clique currently running the Ministry.

Hitherto, their meetings had mostly consisted of devising a strategy to convince the unsuspecting wizarding world of their budding romance and preparing for their first common public appearances, interspersed with disparaging comments and flaming rows. It was only recently Hermione finally had quit her job; combined with her frantic efforts to catch up on her spell-work, it meant that she had had very little time until now to turn her attention to other areas in the wizarding world. Like who was running it, to name but one thing. Draco resolved to put a swift end to her ignorance.

Before Hermione's fourth visit to the Dower house, Draco went through the house like a Niffler following the scent of the Crown Jewels, looking for anything he didn't care for her to find. He had also given Miffy strict instructions for what to do the next time Mistress fell ill; afterwards, the house-elf had spent quite some time ironing her ears.

* * *

"Who's the Minister for Magic again, did you say?" Hermione asked incredulously, when Draco first paused in his lecture.

"You heard me the first time. Berenice Blishwick."

"But…" She frowned, trying to remember why she recognised the name. "Wasn't she something in international dragon preservation? Distantly related to the Blacks?" She had definitely seen the name somewhere on the Black family tree.

"Yes," Draco conceded; judging from the way his eyebrows edged upwards, he hadn't expected her to recognise the name of a conservationist who mostly had been known outside of Britain before her ascension to the Ministry. "The Blishwicks are an old pure-blood family, so she's related to all the old families."

His disdainful gaze communicated quite clearly that he didn't expect Hermione to be aware of that, since she plainly was common as muck in his eyes; she pursed her lip to stop a barb about inbreeding from escaping.

"She's a half-blood, though. Handy sop to the liberals with absolutely no significance in reality. Wishy-washy, in favour of goodwill to all men and beasts-" Draco forestalled her inevitable interruption. "Within reason - she doesn't advocate house-elf rights, or anything. The Blishwicks have a big pile somewhere in Hertfordshire." Naturally, Hermione thought bitterly. "No real power - Blishwick fondly imagines the Ministry runs itself, while she unveils war monuments and launches Porlock Preservation initiatives," Draco concluded his character assassination.

"What did she do in the war?" Hermione asked. She always did, even if it made Draco look like he had swallowed a lemon. Occasionally, the question triggered an acrimonious tirade on how Draco would be lucky if the tendency of her ilk to judge people on their war record would come to an end before he was a hundred, but that he would be surprised.

Hermione didn't care a jot what he thought; she hadn't fought in the war to conveniently forget all about it afterwards.

"She was writing a treatise on Antipodean Opaleyes in New Zealand when it kicked off, so she can claim that she didn't know how bad it was until it was too late. James Colston was Minister before her," Draco added.

Hermione nodded at the mention of Colston; he had been a longstanding member of the Wizengamot and eventually lent his support to Dumbledore, when it was almost too late to mean anything. As he had been over a hundred-and-eighty at the time, it had been somewhat excusable.

"Colston only lasted a few years as a figurehead for the reconstruction, before he had to retire. The Wizengamot had a hard time finding someone who hadn't fought on either side in the war _and_ managed to come out of it without looking like a coward. They'll happily put up with spending more Galleons than strictly necessary on wildlife preservation, in return for Blishwick making them look like we've all moved on from the war."

Draco Summoned a _Daily Prophet _from last Saturday from the pile on his desk.

All issues since 1541 had been bound into a large red calfskin volume every month and archived by the Malfoys. Strictly speaking, it was done by the house-elves; Hermione was quickly becoming aware that lifting a finger was very much optional in the Malfoy household. It explained a lot, in her opinion. In a rare moment of openness, Draco had told her that when he was young, he had sometimes been allowed to pull out a volume of old papers at random to amuse himself by looking at the strange clothes and headgear in the pictures of wizards dead for centuries, happily reading about long-forgotten scandals.

At the Dower House, the papers piled up on Draco's desk until the month was complete. Seemingly, the same shelf had been dedicated to the purpose in Malfoy Manor for hundreds of years. When Draco told her about it he abruptly fell quiet, and Hermione felt an unwelcome pang of sympathy for him and the home he obviously missed.

Now, he leafed through the paper until he found the obligatory picture of the Minister. Conversing earnestly with a Healer at St. Mungo's, she was showing off the line of her perfectly straight Greek nose to the camera. Hermione remembered that her mother had been a Muggle-born from Greece, and some of her Hellenic grace seemed to have persevered even coupled with generations of stodgy Blishwicks.

"So who really runs things?" Hermione wondered; one look at the Minister's pleasant and rather vacuous face suggested that she would have been no match for the average Death Eater. Many of the Ministry staff who weren't Muggle-born had stayed on through Voldemort's reign, and Hermione found it hard to believe Berenice Blishwick could intimidate any of them when they had faced much worse.

"The Wizengamot thinks they do," Draco smirked. Hermione could have recited the functions of the Wizengamot in her sleep; it legislated, acted as the High Court of wizarding justice and elected the Minister for Magic. In his usual way of avoiding anything that could remotely be perceived as interesting by his students, Binns had refrained from explaining the realpolitik behind the words, so Hermione had no idea how things actually worked.

"I take it that's not the case, then?"

"Hardly."

"How is the Wizengamot elected nowadays, anyway?" Hermione asked curiously, momentarily side-tracked. When they were at Hogwarts, there had been a hodge-podge of ways of being appointed to the assembly, rather like the House of Lords. Some pure-blood families had a hereditary seat and other members were appointed by power of their office. The closest thing to democratic appointments to the Wizengamot had been the members nominated by the Minister of the day, and the seats elected by the Wizengamot itself.

"We have elections now, the Muggle way," Draco answered her question, his face absolutely straight. Hermione looked at him incredulously; the wizarding world really must have changed then.

"Really?"

"Come on, Granger. Of course we don't. Some people still think it's a scandal they can't breed Ashwinders at home without a Ministry permit anymore. Do you really think they would have looked at New Labour and said 'Yes, give us some of that!'?"

"Twit."

He raised one eyebrow in the grand manner of the late Severus Snape and continued, ignoring her.

"After the war, it was generally felt that the Minister had too much influence over the direction of the Ministry's policies."

"You don't say?" Hermione muttered ironically, remembering all the trouble that Harry had experienced with the Ministry, as it was hell-bent on denying that Voldemort was back.

Since then, she had realised that the average witch or wizard wasn't as powerless against the Ministry as it seemed to her back then. To the inventive wizard, the wizarding world provided a number of ways of making their views known; its size also meant that most people knew someone in the Wizengamot personally. Naturally, the probability of this was significantly smaller if you were young and Muggle-born; the only member of the Wizengamot Hermione had been acquainted with at Hogwarts was Dumbledore.

"In order to ensure that the Ministry acts in the best interests of wizards and witches on the British Isles, the proportion of Wizengamot members appointed by the Minister has decreased."

"So Blishwick has no real power over the Wizengamot?"

"No." Draco looked grim, and Hermione's expression mirrored his. Having a Minister running their world may not exactly be ideal, but there was some measure of accountability. Ministers might be prone to pursue their own agendas, but at least they could be deposed and replaced.

The way most members left the Wizengamot was with their feet first; it was almost impossible to be lose your seat, unless you resigned willingly or an absolute majority of the assembly ejected you. As the more doddery members had no desire to be on the receiving end of said treatment, with its associated public indignity, they were unlikely to vote for any expulsions at all.

From her research on Horcruxes, Hermione remembered a scandal from the late 17th century; Tobias Titchborne had been accused of using the Dark Arts, leaving a trail of bodies of people who had offended him in his wake. His peers had been too terrified of being next to compel him to step down from the Wizengamot, until his mistress had enough of his bad temper and simply poisoned him one morning over breakfast. She had been acquitted and awarded an Order of Merlin, Second Class.

"Are you seriously telling me that we're run by a bunch of old fogeys who were too thick to prevent Voldemort from rising not just once, but twice?" Hermione asked, horrified.

"Not exactly. It would be an accurate description of the current composition of the Wizengamot, however," Draco drawled.

"Bloody hell." Then, a horrible thought struck her. "You're not on it, are you?"

There was no need for him to say anything; one look at his smug face told her the answer. Then he surprised her.

"You should take the Malfoy seat after we're properly married."

"Are you serious?" Hermione's eyes narrowed, and she had to work very hard to keep a disinterested expression on her face. Draco looked irritated.

"Obviously, otherwise there's no point to this farce. In the eyes of the old tits I've no credibility, despite the fact that most of them spent the war hidden under their duvets behind wards eight feet deep. According to my grandfather, the key skill to survive the Wizengamot is warding; everything else is secondary."

"You certainly make it sound appealing."

"Stop trying to pretend the idea isn't making your knickers all wet, Granger. Anyone who ever met you knows you'd sell your firstborn as a house-elf to get a chance to sit on the Wizengamot." Temporarily, she was lost for words and he continued relentlessly. "Don't worry, they won't listen to you anyway. You probably won't even be called to any court sittings, so the only time you'll be able to go is when they call a plenum meeting."

"But that's the most important-"

Impatiently, Draco waved her interruption away.

"Yes, yes, that's when they elect new members and appoint a new Minister and all that. Doesn't mean that you can come in, make a brilliant speech and convert them all, if that's what you were thinking." Hermione was hoping he wouldn't notice the small blush that traitorously had crept up by her throat and reached her cheeks. "It's all decided in advance, and you'll only look foolish if you try."

Hermione's temper finally snapped.

"Why don't you tell me who actually makes all the decisions then, O wise one?" If that damned eyebrow travelled north one more time, she wouldn't be held responsible for her actions.

"The Wizengamot only sits the odd time, although they do meet more often after the war," Draco lectured. "Most of the actual decisions are made in the various departments in the Ministry. The same department heads and officials that make regulations on cauldron thickness and the like," Hermione winced, remembering Percy when he started at the Ministry. She had always secretly feared that she would have turned out the same if she had grown up in a world with no Voldemort, "also provide the Wizengamot with… guidance before matters are formally referred to them."

"They control the Wizengamot?" she asked, and Draco nodded. "How?"

He smiled a wolfish grin, like the one the first Malfoy might have worn after setting foot on British soil and realising that the natives were armed mainly with blue paint.

"The way it's always been done, Granger: with bribes, fear and favours. Fortunately, my family happens to be something akin to experts when it comes to this sort of thing." When she was seventeen, Hermione would have been disgusted. Now, all she felt was a distinct lack of surprise.

"But you're not pulling the strings at the moment, as it were. So what exactly is it you want to achieve, Malfoy? Do you want the system to be rigged in your favour the way it used to be?" Draco seemed to have been expecting that question.

"Tempting, but no. Regardless of what you choose to believe, I would like for things to _work_. I don't give a toss if members of the Wizengamot are chosen based on their ability to play Quidditch blindfolded or because they have freckles in the shape of the Big Dipper. All I want is to prevent a new war. I realise it may be overly optimistic, but I'd also like there to be some sort of expectation of basic competence when it comes to the way things are run."

"As opposed to the status quo?"

"At the moment a small number of people are relishing being in control for the first time, and they're making absolutely terrible decisions. Coincidentally, they got to where they are today by stepping over the remains of your precious Order of the Phoenix, so our interests happen to dovetail nicely in this particular area."

Ah, that.

Draco had thrown out allusions to how this still unknown group of Ministry officials had muscled out the Order on the battlefield and afterwards. Once her attention had been drawn to it, it hadn't taken Hermione long to realise that a disproportionate amount of leading Order members with any standing in the wizarding world had succumbed during the last few minutes of the war.

Yet, Hermione would like to explore the way Malfoy was painting himself as the preserver of the wizarding world before she pursued that particular avenue.

"What exactly are these people doing, and why has it got your knickers in a twist?" she asked, refusing to let Draco control the conversation any longer.

"Left unchecked, they'll cause another civil war. They've done nothing to address the issues that led to the first one, let alone the second. Oh, they did lock up as many of the participants as possible, but that doesn't really count."

Hermione was oddly disappointed that his true colours were showing now.

"And what were those issues, in your opinion?"

Draco looked at her, exasperated.

"Not this again, Granger. I'm not about to start preaching about pure-blood supremacy after marrying _you_, am I? The same divisions are there, believe me - it's only that some families had their wings clipped in the war."

"Or were erased," Hermione quietly added, remembering the last of the Potters falling. Draco inclined his head slightly, in silence, before he continued, willing her to remain quiet by pinning her down with his eyes.

"The Dark Lord latched on to what appears to be the perennial tension between the established members of the wizarding world and new entrants. I know that you're inclined to interpret anything that appears to favour the former as discrimination against the latter, but do think for a moment."

Reluctantly, Hermione humoured him; her expression probably made it rather obvious what she was thinking and that it wasn't very flattering, but nevertheless he continued undeterred.

"There's a constant inflow of people with no idea of the history and traditions of the world they're joining. Of course there'll be friction between them and those who have been part of that world for generations, protecting it from the Muggles." Momentarily reassured that she wasn't about to interrupt him, Draco paused for a moment. "My great great-aunt Dorcas was a hundred and ninety when she died. When she was young, she heard stories of the Witch Hunts from witches and wizards who actually were persecuted by Muggles. Is it so strange that we should be wary of the Muggle world?"

Hermione was prepared to launch into a diatribe about a dozen things, but something made her pause. It was the way Draco was looking at her.

At school, he had either been enraged or sneered at her like something he might have stepped in and couldn't get off his shoe. Now, he was leaning slightly forwards towards her as he was talking, hands in the air, and he was looking at her like she was an equal.

Hermione was under no illusion that he had any fonder feelings for her, nor she for him, but if he at least acknowledged that she was a fellow human being regardless of her blood status, something monumental had changed. And, like the sap she was, she would give him a chance even if he did happen to be Draco Malfoy – otherwise, what was the point of it all?

"Don't forget that the Muggle world has changed so quickly that it's almost unrecognisable to anyone over forty, if they don't venture out into it now and then. Even if Auntie Dorcas was to Apparate into Central London, she'd return quicker than you can say 'Balderdash'." Draco briefly closed his eyes, as if he was remembering that very occurrence.

"The pure-bloods, and even older half-bloods, will naturally be wary," he continued. "And all the Ministry did, in its ineffable wisdom, when those divisions crystallised more than fifty years ago was to do nothing. Instead-"

Hermione could see the muscles in his jaw tensing and his knuckles turning white from the death grip he had on the edge of the table.

"Instead _Tom Riddle_," Draco forced the name over his lips with what appeared to be a gargantuan effort, "came along and provided a sympathetic ear to those who felt they weren't being listened to. Because of him, we still can't have a real discussion about real problems, because the Ministry has its head wedged even more firmly up its own arse."

Hermione looked sceptic, but she had been impressed despite herself by his use of Voldemort's real name.

"Believe me, Granger, I have bigger problems than blood purity, even if I cared about that anymore," he gritted out.

"What makes you think that I'll partake in this- this vendetta you're waging against the Ministry?" Hermione asked, leaving the infected issue of blood aside for a moment.

"Apart from the fact that they wrongfully sentenced you and kept Weasley sedated for more than six years?" Draco asked with a smirk.

"Yes, apart from that." He really could be a prize prat when he wanted, Hermione thought.

"Surely you must have realised that the odds were rather long that almost all members of the Order of the Phoenix with any standing in society would succumb towards the end of the Battle of Hogwarts?"

"I didn't exactly have access to a time line of the battle until recently."

"Well, now you do. Courtesy of Rita Skeeter, I might add," Draco said, referring to Skeeter's bestselling _The Battle of Hogwarts – The Inside Story Of The Day That Changed Our World_, which was surprisingly accurate in its descriptions of the movements of the participants, which could be independently verified. Its attempt to provide the reader with an understanding of what went through the protagonists' minds at the time was not quite as authoritative. Hermione didn't recall either clinging to Ron, sobbing that she couldn't kill Harry, as per the 24th edition, nor laughing coldly as she struck him down, as the 23rd edition claimed that she had.

"It's rather obvious that the Ministry contingent had their own agenda," Hermione admitted grudgingly. Once you knew what to look for, it was evident. Anyone who had stood up against Voldemort who had political connections or was a potential Minister for Magic had expired in the Final Battle, if they had made it that far in the first place.

It didn't seem to matter whether they actually had been in the Order or not; Hermione knew for a fact that Lydia Switchcombe hadn't, for one. Towards the end of the battle Switchcombe had been killed by a stray Confundus, in what now seemed to be an apparent attempt to stop her from influencing post-war politics. She had been the youngest Head of the Department of Mysteries for a century, had at least three relatives in the Wizengamot and she had come out strongly against Voldemort in the end.

For anyone who wasn't there at the time, it may seem incredible that the assassinations hadn't been detected, but not to Hermione. First of all, there hadn't been that many of them: a dozen, at the most. Secondly, towards the end the battlefield had been like a scene out of Dante's Inferno. It was impossible to survive the crossfire of spells and ricochets bouncing off shielding charms if your attention was focused on anything other than fighting.

She wondered if anyone had used a Pensieve to analyse the events afterwards; remembering the carnage, Hermione wouldn't blame people for preferring to forget what they had seen instead.

"Especially when I had filled in the gaps in the story with a quill," Draco smirked. "Even Weasley would twig that. Eventually." She made a sour face at him.

"I would imagine that you'd be eager to exert revenge on those who decided that Arthur Weasley should expire, to facilitate their own ascension to power," he continued, flicking a speck of dust from the sleeve of his robe with studied indifference.

Hermione was taken by surprise by her own reaction. For the last seven years, she had known that Mr Weasley was killed in the battle, but the suggestion that he had been brought down by those who should have been fighting alongside him instead still hit her like a cannon ball in the stomach.

Her response escaped without volition; she heard it coming out through her mouth before she had made a conscious decision.

"Yes," she said, in a voice that was more hoarse than usual.

"And McGonagall?" Draco added, relentlessly driving his point home. Hermione refused to answer him; he got what he was looking for.

If it was a ringing endorsement he was after, he could bloody well stick it up his jumper.

**-oOo-**

* * *

**There is little canon information about how the Wizengamot is elected; the above is strictly my own invention.  
**


	14. Chapter 13 - Of Ghosts And Grace

**Thanks to ****my beta **MysticDew, who knows Draco's mind better than he knows himself...

* * *

**Chapter 13 **

**Of Ghosts And Grace**

**-oOo-**

**3PM, the 27****th**** of May 2005 - Hyde Park, London**

Hermione closed her eyes and revelled in the sunlight, still tasting the last drop of her ice cream from Fortescue's successor Giovanni on her tongue. For a moment, life was gloriously simple again; she was alive, it was spring and Ron was sitting right next to her on a bench in the park.

Ron, never very attuned to the tenor of others' thoughts, startled her out of that fleeting moment where all was right with the world.

"So. You and Malfoy are getting serious, eh?" he said, in a surprisingly level tone. Hermione and Draco had been spotted leaving a restaurant together again. It wasn't an unusual occurrence, except this time the ring she had been wearing made the front page of _The Daily Prophet_ the following day. It had been too much to hope that none of the Weasleys would have spotted it.

"Yes. We've been spending a lot of time together, you know," Hermione said wearily. She had been dreading this, knowing she couldn't possibly tell Ron the truth, but what else could she tell him? Desperate enough to seek Draco's counsel, she had finally settled on his advice to explain as little as possible. Still no champion liar, especially not to Ron, she just didn't know what else to do.

"Blimey, Hermione! You don't get engaged to marry a bloke just because you've been seeing a lot of him!"

She sighed.

"I know, Ron, but what do you want me to tell you? I wouldn't have believed it myself, but we just seem to click, somehow."

Rather than scoff or look puzzled as she expected, Ron gave her a measuring look and remained quiet. It unnerved Hermione much more than it would have done if he had flown off the handle the way he used to do.

They were silent for a few minutes, watching the world pass by; au pairs juggling bundles of children interspersed with the occasional jogger and swarms of smartly dressed office workers, tapping away on their Blackberries and barely watching where they were going.

Finally Ron returned to the subject, when the suspense had made her even more jittery.

"Look, Hermione. I'm sure you've got your reasons, but being crazy in love with Ferret Boy isn't one of them."

"Ron! That's my fiancé you're talking about!"

"Yeah. And I'd like to know how that happened. It's easy enough to see what he wants from you, but what sort of hold could he have over you?"

This would of course be the time Ron chose to finally become perceptive. If she hadn't been so scared of what he might discover, Hermione could have screamed with annoyance at the irony of it.

Ron twisted the napkin in his hands around and around, just like he did with whatever happened to be at hand when he was playing chess against a tricky opponent.

Suddenly he tore the napkin in two, startling Hermione.

"Bloody hell, please tell me you didn't trade with him to get me out of St. Mungo's!" She was shocked into silence, and couldn't come up with a rebuttal. The birds continued to sing, indifferent to the petty human concerns being laid bare beneath them.

"Hermione, you didn't!"

She looked resolutely in front of her, desperate to regain hold of the conversation.

"Of course I didn't, Ron. Don't be ridiculous!" Hermione did her best to sound dismissive, stretching her legs out to catch the sun in a show of unconcern.

"It's not so ridiculous if you won't even look at me when you deny it, is it?" he said. "If you can look at me and swear that you didn't make a bargain with Malfoy to get me out, I'll believe you. It's up to you."

Damn. She steeled herself, but the moment she met his gaze she knew that he would see the truth. This was _Ron_, who she had grown up with and loved and fought with, and in many ways it would be a miserable day when he couldn't see straight through her.

"Damn it, I'm right!" He grabbed her shoulders. "What did he make you promise, Hermione? Did he… " Suddenly he appeared to decide that the details weren't really important right now, and Hermione was relieved. Ron going off on a tangent imagining Draco blackmailing her into all sorts of things would be distinctly unhelpful.

"Listen, I can look after myself now, so why don't you just go and tell Malfoy to go stuff himself?" he tried.

"I can't! I already- Ron, just forget it, OK? I'm in this already and it's too late to back out now." He pursed his lips and looked at her, his sharp gaze seemingly blazing a trail straight through her.

"You don't owe either Harry or me anything. You know that, right?"

"I know," she mumbled uncomfortably.

"You don't need to make up for- for doing what had to be done. Harry begged you to do it, remember? And you shouldn't feel responsible for me either. You have to look after yourself, Hermione."

She put her small hand in his large, freckled one. It was warm and soft, and comforted her in a way nothing else had been able to, ever since she started hunting Horcruxes.

"I know, Ron. But sometimes you just have to do something you don't really want to, you know? It's not like I did it just for your sake, either." He raised his eyebrows, clearly not convinced.

"I didn't! It wasn't so bloody marvellous to live as a Muggle, working in a hotel..." Hermione turned her head to look at him, basking in having Ron sitting next to her in the sun, alive and real and _there_.

"You've no idea how great it is to be here with you now. It was worth it. It'll be worth it." Her voice rang with sincerity. Ron squeezed her hand, and then started twisting her engagement ring around her finger, instead of the by now discarded napkin.

"So your mind is made up about marrying Malfoy, then?"

"Yes. I've given him my word. Besides, I really do think I could make a difference. If I can get enough momentum to push some reforms through the Wizengamot-"

-o-

In the shadows under the trees behind them, a man was listening intently to their conversation even though he should have been too far away to hear a word. At one point, he seemed on the verge of bursting out of his hiding place and storm over to the bench where they were sitting, but he remained unseen.

It was gratifying that Granger appeared to be appropriately grateful to him for rescuing her from her exile, already showing signs of switching her loyalties to her new allegiance. The way she reassured Weasley that her true desires were different to her chosen course of action was almost touching. As if anyone as clever as Granger would have turned down a chance of becoming a Malfoy, if it was offered to her!

There didn't appear to be any major impediments to achieve the desired outcome now, except possibly Weasley. He was turning out to be a more formidable adversary than expected. Surely the conversation in the park had been a fluke; Weasley must have stored up some flashes of intelligence during those seven years of inactivity, and burnt them all at the same time.

On the whole, Draco thought, his plans were progressing most satisfactorily.

-oOo-

* * *

Hermione couldn't be certain, but she rather thought Mrs Malfoy was impressed. Clearly, she had expected her future daughter-in-law to either be awkward and insecure, or overly brash and confrontational, at the very formal engagement party she had thrown for what remained of the pure-blood elite.

Instead, Hermione had donned some well cut dark blue robes, and thought she looked quite sophisticated with her hair in a smooth chignon. She greeted the guests with a cool civility that matched Mrs Malfoy's restrained refinement.

Hermione had long since given up on becoming a raving beauty. When they were growing up, the many 'make-overs' Ginny had subjected her to mainly consisted of being smothered in industrial quantities of make up, and had singularly failed to make Hermione emerge butterfly-like from her shell to bedazzle her previous begrudgers, with the possible exception of the Yule Ball. Afterwards, Hermione regretfully chalked that down to some people discovering that she was actually female for the first time. A decade later this revelation was unlikely to have the same impact, but she had finally learnt to use her attire to project confidence and power.

Tonight, Hermione was determined not to show any chinks in her armour.

Mrs Malfoy had no way of knowing that greeting people who despised her for being a Muggle-born or whom she had fought against in the war held no terrors for Hermione. She had worked as a night receptionist at a busy hotel in the city centre of London; this was nothing in comparison. No one was drunk or off their head on drugs, she could defend herself rather more efficiently with a wand than as an unarmed five foot five Muggle, and if someone was rude to her she could retaliate without losing her job. Hermione was almost hoping someone would cross the line: if it happened to be Pansy Parkinson, so much the better.

She noticed that Draco, who knew her rather better than his mother did, took care to warn his friends with a sharp look when they approached. Their contemporaries had heard enough about Hermione at Hogwarts, and had additional evidence of her ability to rain retribution on those who opposed her after seeing Marietta Edgecombe's face covered in spots in her fourth year, to steer well clear of incurring her displeasure.

Eventually, the unfortunate guinea pig turned out to be Feodor Enthwistle. He was ten years their senior and was so far removed from the Malfoys' circles that he derived his limited knowledge of either of their characters solely from the press. That turned out to be a mistake.

When he approached the small group standing by the door he looked Hermione over, stripping her of her evening robes with his eyes before dismissing her.

"Can't see what all the fuss is about. Surely you know Mudbloods aren't to be brought into the drawing room, eh, Malfoy?"

"What about ill-mannered buffoons with the intelligence of a newt? What do you think we should do with people like you, Mr Enthwhistle?" Hermione asked him, with a smile that had him fumbling for his wand. It was too late; Malfoy had already flicked his own out and stuck it in his face.

"That is my future wife you're talking too. She's also the woman who stopped Voldemort from coming back for good, so I suggest you fall to your knees and apologise to her unless you want to meet the same fate," Draco said in a clear, cold voice that seemed to reach every corner of the room.

Every single conversation seemed to stop at the same time, as witches and wizards turned to watch the spectacle unfolding in front of them. The way Hermione and the two Malfoys formed a united front against the hapless infractor wasn't lost on any of them. Neither was the hard look on Hermione's face, as she considered Draco's suggestion.

"No," she said reluctantly and Enthwhistle sagged in relief, "I'd rather greet our guests than waste any more time on this pathetic excuse for a magical being. Just leave this place now, and never bother me again." As he turned around, scrambling for the door, Hermione didn't even bother to hex him; she was pretty certain Draco would look after that.

Afterwards it actually turned out to have been Mrs Malfoy who hit Enthwhistle with a Bat Bogey Hex, in an effort to make his humiliation as public as possible while not straying too far from the demands of hospitality or breaking the conditions of her parole.

Enthwhistle broke into a run. When the door slammed closed behind him as he escaped to the street, Hermione and the Malfoys continued to greet their guests, who gamely pretended that nothing worth acknowledging had occurred. Everyone started talking again, albeit with slightly more animation this time.

Their audience appeared to duly have soaked up the spectacle of the Malfoys gallantly defending Hermione's honour. She wondered how many of the elegantly attired guests who flirted and gossipped and danced around her believed the story of school day enemies turning lovers they were spinning.

For all she knew, Malfoy could have put Enthwhistle up to it, to ensure that the opportunity to show off their newfound unity wasn't lost simply because no one had the mettle to insult her at a convenient moment. Draco did have a flair for the dramatic, but Hermione had to concede that it was unlikely he had bothered to go to such lengths. There would be no shortage of slurs coming her way in the future, especially considering what she was marrying into.

It would have been nice to believe that she had two stalwart defenders behind her, but she knew better.

"Hermione!" She didn't recognise the voice, but turned around with her polite smile still intact. It had started to wilt a while ago, but she was gamely clinging on to it as she was greeting the stragglers.

"Hermione, don't you recognise me?" A tall, blond stranger with kind eyes towered over her, and she frantically racked her brains. Something in his guileless smile triggered a memory.

"Neville!" Hermione laughed in delighted surprise as she returned his embrace. "It's so good to see you! Let me look at you," she said, creating some distance between them while still holding on to his arms.

She almost had to lean back to see his face; here was finally someone peace had treated well. Neville was almost unrecognisable from the diffident boy anxiously clutching his toad that she had met on the Hogwarts Express. This man wore an aura of contentment, and he managed to envelop even someone as weary as Hermione in the feeling of safety that radiated from him. It was wonderful to see that at least one of her classmates had realised all the promise inherent in his younger self. Neville still wasn't particularly handsome, but after spending far too much time looking at Malfoy that almost came as a relief.

"You look great, Neville!" she said sincerely, cutting her musings short. Plenty of time for that later.

"You too, Hermione," he looked at her admiringly, and she was grateful that her Muggle makeup and elaborate elf-made coiffure were sufficient to impress one of her oldest friends. "It's great to see you again!" Neville continued, and Hermione suddenly remembered that this wasn't an uncomplicated reunion between two old friends and that their every move was being watched.

"You too! I'd better-" Returning to the artificial, breezy tone of voice she had been using before, she gesticulated at the small group of guests that had formed in front of the Malfoys. Neville nodded in understanding. He did seem to cast her a strange look before he continued towards a group of people further into the room, but she had no time to analyse it as Theodore Nott was kissing her hand with a roguish smile.

It was hours before Hermione caught up with Neville again. She had smiled and danced and been polite to the whole of wizarding society until her face was sore. Apparently the ball had been an astounding success, in no small measure due to people wanting to confirm for themselves that Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy really were about to enter into wedlock.

Now, Hermione was stealing a few minutes to get some rest in the shadow of a gigantic potted fern. After casting a subtle Notice-Me-Not charm, she kicked her shoes off. The marble floor was blessedly cool. She could see someone approaching out of the corner of her eye, but fervently hoped that they wouldn't notice her and concentrated on wiggling her toes into the stone floor.

"I know you're there, Hermione," Neville's voice said in her ear, and she jumped.

"Merlin, Neville, you nearly gave me a heart attack!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. I've been trying to get to talk to you all evening, but it's not that easy."

"Well, you've got your chance now," Hermione said, not quite knowing what to expect. It couldn't be that bad, surely, or he wouldn't have greeted her so warmly before? However, despite his diffidence and lack of confidence, Neville had usually stood up for what he thought was right ever since he was eleven. Hermione thought it unlikely that she had lived up to his standards, so she was somewhat apprehensive.

"I just wanted you to know that I never thought- I never believed what the Ministry said about you." He brushed his hair out of his face, in the way she remembered he used to do a few months into the terms at Hogwarts, when the bowl haircut his grandmother had inflicted on him had grown out somewhat.

"I've been kicking myself ever since I found out what really happened. I mean, I was there!" Neville looked around them to make sure no one was paying them any attention, and leaned down towards her. "I tried to find you," he whispered, "but I didn't have any luck, and I didn't dare going against the Ministry openly-" he cast another quick glance behind her, "Not that it's any excuse, but Gran took some bad hits in the battle, and there's only me to look after her-"

"Stop, Neville! There was nothing you could have done. I can't believe that you even tried to find me…" she trailed off, struck by this revelation. She laughed suddenly. "You really shouldn't have, but it means a lot to me. Truly."

None of them quite knew what to say next, until Hermione thought to ask what he was doing with his time these days.

"Oh, I'm apprenticed to Pomona at Hogwarts!" Neville's whole face lit up, and there was no doubt where his aura of contentment came from. "It's brilliant. I can still stay with Gran, and Apparate over to Hogwarts every morning."

It took very little encouragement for him to give her an animated description of what his apprenticeship entailed, and Hermione listened in fascination. She had never really had the opportunity to investigate what lay beyond a Hogwarts education, and it was something she needed to consider now. It was equally fascinating to see Neville in his element.

"Longbottom," her fiancé suddenly said at her shoulder, and bowed stiffly. Neville returned the bow in a similarly restrained fashion, and Hermione recalled that he was as much a pure-blood as Draco was.

"Malfoy. May I offer my congratulations?"

"You may," Draco responded curtly, and Hermione wondered what had transpired between them during the years she had been absent. She would have expected tension thick enough to cut with a knife, not this careful neutrality.

"Hermione, I'd like to introduce you to Mr and Mrs Parkinson, Pansy's parents. Longbottom, would you excuse us?" His voice was cold and utterly correct. Neville and Hermione responded in kind. It wasn't until Draco had offered Hermione his arm and they were on their way towards the Parkinsons that Neville seemed to recall that his arrangements with Hermione hadn't been finalised yet.

"I'll owl you, Hermione, OK?"

"Let me owl you! See you soon, Neville!" Hermione turned around, and then she was gone. Neville was suddenly standing alone under the fern, looking after the unlikely couple. He didn't get close to her again that night; the most he saw of Hermione was a flash of her hair in the crowd.

-oOo-

* * *

When she opened her eyes and saw the gates of Hogwarts before her, the feeling of being home again after more than seven years of wandering was so strong that it almost knocked Hermione off her feet. The silhouette of the castle, as familiar as her own face in the mirror, rose proudly against a ripe July sun that made her squint and shade her eyes with her hand.

Clad in its summer cloak of lush greenery, the harsh edges of the castle disappeared in clouds of leaves. Chestnuts and oaks rose high towards the sky, reaching for the crenellated peaks of the towers. Unbidden their names returned to Hermione, as if they had been waiting to be summoned all this time.

She wondered if anyone was teaching Divination in the North Tower these days; she hadn't kept up with staff changes since her return from exile. All she knew was that Professors Flitwick, McGonagall and Snape had fallen during the Final Battle and that Marcus Wilburne, who had a solid if uninspiring track record in the Wizengamot, had been appointed as the new Headmaster not long after the war. He had concentrated on restoring the school, and appeared to be of the uncommon opinion that Hogwarts ought to be an educational institution rather than a participant in the game of political chess.

The rattle of a set of keys so large they seemed to be more suited to the pockets of a giant than the hands of a normal human being, startled Hermione out of her contemplation. Hastily, she lowered her gaze from the rooftops and found herself staring straight into the eyes of Mr Filch.

"Oh!" Recovering, she cast around for an appropriate greeting. None came to mind, so she stuck with a civil: "Good afternoon, Mr Filch." He didn't respond. Instead, he motioned for her to enter as the massive iron gates silently swung open. There was no need to ask her twice; Hermione stepped forward eagerly, like every other time she had entered through these gates.

Mr Filch led her up towards the castle in silence. To her surprise he brought her around the main body of the building and towards the greenhouses, rather than into the Entrance Hall.

Afterwards, Hermione couldn't quite remember how she had gone from mutely following in his footsteps to clutching the wall of the castle and struggling to stay on her feet. Mr Filch coughing loudly in her ear recalled her to the present, and startled her sufficiently to get moving again. Wordlessly, she followed him towards their destination.

After barely managing to walk across the grounds, Hermione couldn't quite figure out how Neville could stand being back at Hogwarts. Perhaps it was because the defining tragedies of his life had occurred long before he arrived there for the first time. At Hogwarts, he had finally come into his own and fought back against his parents' tormentors.

Possibly, that was the key to his ability to endure constant reminders of that terrible final year. Luna had told Hermione enough about the first term of that year to recognise that it had been a low-scale guerrilla war, and the only reason the outcome hadn't been lethal before the battle commenced had been Snape's covert influence.

Hermione trained her eyes on the back of Filch's coat, to keep moving despite the ghosts of her memories appearing everywhere around her. It would be nice to be able to focus on Neville once she saw him, rather than being reduced to a gibbering wreck simultaneously lamenting the fallen and following the steps of her younger self down the rabbit hole where her happiest memories were hidden.

Finally, they reached the end of their journey. One of the greenhouses was missing a whole wall of glass and Neville was busy digging in the rich soil, surrounded by a giant molehill of upturned earth. At the sound of the odd couple approaching, he left his spade stuck in the ground and turned around.

"Hermione! Thank you for bringing her here, Argus," he politely addressed the older man, who gave him a half-nod and turned around back towards the castle without a word. Neville looked surprised, but turned his attention to Hermione.

"Sorry, just thought I'd get some work done before you arrived. I'm planting Bubotubers here and they don't like soil that's been exposed to magic overmuch. Just let me get cleaned up, and I'll get us some tea…"

They combined forces to cast Scouring Charms to get rid of the dirt, and in a very short space of time Neville looked clean and a little pink. To Hermione's relief, he didn't intend to bring her very far for tea; a table and two garden chairs were set up around the corner of the greenhouse.

A vaguely familiar house-elf was fussing with a white tablecloth, trying to get it to stay flat in the slight breeze. As he spotted them approaching, a click of his fingers resulted in the pristine surface suddenly being covered with a tea fit for the Queen.

"It's hard for you to be back here, isn't it?" Neville asked her suddenly, in the middle of telling her what was going on in the greenhouses during the summer. It was as if he only had been talking about Herbology to calm her down, like a skittish horse which could be soothed with tales of Devil's Snare and fluxweed.

"Yes. Harder than I thought. How can you stand it?" It slipped out before Hermione could stop herself. Neville barked out a short laugh, entirely devoid of humour.

"I couldn't, at first. I went back for my seventh year, you know. Gran insisted. I think she thought it'd be good for me. The school was being rebuilt, and the teachers were trying to scramble some sort of curriculum together. I don't think they had a clue what to do with the students who had been in the war." He shook his head. "We were walking around like zombies." Mrs Longbottom certainly believed in the School of Hard Knocks, Hermione thought, and tried to picture what their year must have been like. Too many people were missing: Draco, Greg Goyle and Hermione had been in Azkaban and Ron in St. Mungo's. Lavender had probably been there, too. Harry and Crabbe were dead-

As if he had guessed what she was thinking, Neville continued:

"The ghosts were almost the worst…" It was only then Hermione remembered that the wizarding world had ghosts more substantial than the memories that had haunted her on the way from the gates. For a moment she felt a surge of hope, before quashing it almost immediately. She would not hope such a thing for her friend.

"Who?" she demanded hoarsely and Neville complied, sensing her urgency.

"Colin Creevy, Professor McGonagall and Jocasta Hazier. Never heard of her before she died. Oh, and some Death Eater, but no one ever found out his name. Professor McGonagall disappeared after the first year, but the rest are still there."

There was nothing to say to that, and they fell silent. Hermione was desperately hoping that she wouldn't run into Colin's ghost, Gryffindor bravery be damned.

"It got better," Neville said, picking up his tale again. "In a way, I suppose it was like we were reconquering Hogwarts - reclaiming it. That sounds stupid." He blushed, but she understood.

"No, it doesn't. You were brave to go back, Neville."

He shrugged.

"Now, Howarts is my home again," he said simply. "Even if I don't actually stay here at night." Hermione remembered that he returned to his Gran every night, and resolved to ensure Neville had some fun in his life too; at least she could do that for him.

"I always thought you'd want to come back and work here as a teacher," he said, and Hermione was taken by surprise by the sudden pleasure evoked by the idea, before regretfully dismissing it.

"I don't really think I'm cut out to be a teacher, Neville. I wouldn't have the patience for it," she explained, picking just one of the many reasons.

"You were pretty patient with me," he reminded her.

"That's not the same! Imagine having a whole class of students," she exclaimed, before remembering that it was exactly what Neville would have to handle if he was to take over after Professor Sprout. "Sorry, I'm sure you'll be great at it. I just know I wouldn't be."

Before she arrived, Hermione had been wondering which of the teachers she would run into. She was quite relieved to find that they were staying outside, and declined Neville's invitation to see the restored Great Hall. When she desisted even a visit to the library he gave her a sharp glance, but didn't comment. Hermione knew Neville still was friendly with most of the Weasleys and many others of their contemporaries, and realised that he probably was used to people being hesitant around Hogwarts.

The only member of staff that she clapped eyes on during her visit, except Mr Filch, was Professor Sprout. She appeared from one of the greenhouses halfway through their tea and didn't look surprised at seeing Hermione, whom she greeted warmly before rushing off to tend to her bladderworts in the loch.

When the time came for Hermione to depart, Neville didn't make any move to fetch Mr Filch again and walked her to the gates himself instead. This time, Hermione tried to take in the surroundings: the familiar expanse of grass in front of the lake, the edges of the Forbidden Forest creeping up towards the school, and all the little reminders that this was the home of hundreds of children during most of the year.

It was easier now. After talking to Neville, she could see that Hogwarts was less a monument to her memories than a living, breathing organism, preparing for a new intake of students. She resisted the temptation of asking how many new students would arrive in September; she wouldn't have any good reason to ask, and surely Draco would be able to procure the information from someone else.

Courteously, Neville held the side gate open for her, and then lingered in his tracks as if he wanted to say something. It fell on Hermione to break the sudden, awkward silence.

"Thanks for inviting me, Neville. It was great to see you." For a moment he looked grateful, and then he appeared to screw up his courage.

"Hermione… Are you sure about Malfoy?" _Oh Merlin, not this again!_ she thought. It seemed like every single Gryffindor friend she had felt it was imperative to warn her against marrying Draco. As if it was absolutely inconceivable that a Slytherin ever could be up to any good, Hermione mused, momentarily forgetting that she wasn't exactly entering into a marriage of true minds. Some of the irritation must have shown on her face, since Neville hastened to apologise.

"Sorry, I know it's not really my business…"

"No, it's not." Then, she remembered that if there was anyone at Hogwarts who had suffered more from Malfoy than Harry and herself it had been Neville, and relented. "It'll be fine, Neville. I know what I'm doing. He's changed a lot, after the war..." Convincing Neville of that would be difficult, however, and would not be achieved in an afternoon. "We'll be very happy together," Hermione said firmly, hoping she would not be struck down by lightning for uttering such a colossal falsehood. "Just you see."

"I hope so," he said anxiously, peering down at her. "If anyone deserves to be happy, Hermione, it's you." She didn't even know where to start on that one, but felt a surge of affection for Neville, who had retained his gentleness through everything that had happened to him. He reminded Hermione very much of Harry, in that way. They both had an essential core of kindness, despite everything they had to endure.

"I love you, Neville," she said, and then immediately blushed. It wasn't exactly something she usually went around telling her friends, no matter how true it may be. "I didn't mean it that way - just as a friend!" she said as quickly as she could without drawing another breath, and to her relief Neville laughed.

"I know that, don't worry." He blushed a magnificent bright red, but manfully managed to mutter: "I love you too. In the same way, of course." Despite the natural embarrassment facing every Englishman forced to vocalise this sort of thing, he even stretched to giving her an awkward hug.

Neville spent several long minutes staring at the spot Hermione had Disapparated from, although the bare lawn in front of the gates seemed entirely devoid of interest to the casual observer.


	15. Chapter 14 - Once More, With Feeling

**Thanks to MysticDew, who has spent a lot of time on making this story better! Any remaining mistakes are my own.  
**

******Warning: there are references to the use of cannabis in this chapter.**

******-o-**

* * *

**Chapter 14 **

**Once More, With Feeling**

**-oOo-**

**11AM, the 20****th**** of July 2005 - The Dower House, Malfoy Manor, Wiltshire**

Hermione had received an urgent owl from her fiancé, asking her to make her way to the Malfoy residence as soon as possible. Used to his peremptory summons by now, she waited half an hour before Apparating over to make him stew a little.

Once there, Miffy directed her to wait in the drawing room, where Hermione resorted to amusing herself by coming up with potions containing as many of the different species in the ornate flower arrangement as possible. She was planning on sitting her N.E.W.T.s soon, so any practice came in handy.

As she was pondering whether Amortentia or the Draught of Peace best met her criteria, Malfoy stormed in with _The Daily Prophet_ clutched in one fist and his wand in the other. He threw the paper down on the table in the middle of the room, nearly knocking over the flower arrangement, and pointed to the front page with an angry flourish.

"What the hell do you call this?" he demanded.

"_The_ _Daily Prophet_. Look, it says so right here on the masthead!" Hermione replied promptly. Now that she knew what ailed him she refused to play along with his little games. Draco Malfoy had been a hypocrite for as long as she had known him, so this was not entirely unexpected.

"This!" He put his thumb down violently, landing on a picture of Neville and Hermione hugging by the Hogwarts gates. The tiny figures in the photo threw themselves to one side of the picture and the miniature Hermione was shaking her fist at him. "How dare you go around cavorting with Longbottom when you're supposed to be engaged to me?"

"First of all, we weren't cavorting. We're friends who hadn't seen each other for a very long time. Gryffindors hug - get used to it." Hermione took a deep breath before continuing. "Secondly, even if we were_,_" she said icily, "what business is that of yours?" If she hadn't been holding on to her own temper with her fingertips, the look of fury on Draco's face would almost have made her retreat.

"We had a deal, Granger. If you can't hold up your end of the bargain-"

That was the issue, she realised, because there wasn't a whole lot he would be able to do in that case.

"Relax, Malfoy. I told you I won't break my word. I'll do exactly what we agreed." Draco appeared to calm down somewhat, and Hermione threw caution to the wind. This had to be settled sooner or later. "But before you give yourself a heart attack, remember we agreed to be married in name only. There's nothing going on between me and Neville, but if there was-" the storm clouds gathered on his face again "-and I was discreet about it, it would be none of your bloody business!"

She pulled her wand out, just in case.

"How could it be none of my business? You're- you'll be my _wife_," Draco snarled, in a very credible imitation of his late aunt. "The minute you carry on with another man, it makes a mockery of our marriage!"

Suddenly he was towering over Hermione, using his size as a tool of intimidation just like his father had done. It had always struck her as self-contradictory in someone who believed in the supremacy of magic over brawn.

"Be very clear about this, Granger; I will not tolerate being played for a fool. You will not make me into a cuckold," he stated in a cold, controlled voice.

Hermione was furious; she could feel her hair forming a halo of angry tendrils around her head, and her magic was perilously close to slipping out of control. Yet, in the part of her mind that never shut down, not even when she might spontaneously combust, she found time to wonder where Draco picked up his vocabulary from. _Othello _or_ Les Liaisons Dangereuses_? _  
_

"What about you? Were you planning on extending the same courtesy to me?" she asked pointedly, and just as she had expected Draco looked ever so slightly bewildered. "I promise you this, Malfoy. I'll treat you exactly the same way as you treat me. If you don't meet up with Daphne Greengrass or any other of your old flames-," he looked astonished that Hermione would know about that. Going through the back issues of _The Daily Prophet _had definitely been time well spent. "I won't be seeing anyone either. In public, at least."

She stepped closer to him, and had to crank her neck backwards so she could look into his eyes.

"But know this, Malfoy. If you go behind my back, I will find out. I won't take kindly being made to look like a fool either," she had enough of that with Ron, "and I'll make you regret it. Without breaking our deal."

"So what do you propose then? Celibacy?" Draco looked outraged at the prospect.

"Either that, or you stop being so bloody hypocritical!" Hermione hissed.

"This sort of arrangement worked for thousands of years before you came along, Granger!"

"Oh, I see! It's fine for you to have a bit on the side, but Caesar's wife must be above suspicion! You can take your antiquated notions and stuff them! If you can't keep your sodding trousers on-" Draco opened his mouth to retort but before he could reply Mrs Malfoy came in from the garden, her hands flying to her mouth and the basket with flowers she had been carrying slipping out of her grasp.

"Draco, Miss Granger! What is going on?" They quickly stepped away from each other, and Hermione took a few deep breaths to calm down.

"We were just discussing a few- a few details of our upcoming marriage, Mrs Malfoy," she managed in an even voice. Draco was in no condition to contribute to the conversation; he looked like someone had dropped a Hippogriff on him from a great height.

"Oh, really?" Mrs Malfoy responded, suspiciously looking between them.

"Yes, as pertains to the importance of- of reciprocity between man and wife." Hermione continued, reluctant to let Draco think he was off the hook. To her great astonishment, his face had turned a magnificent tomato red. Clearly, he wasn't accustomed to discussing these things with his mother. It was with some difficulty Hermione managed to suppress her sudden giggles.

"Yes, your father and I have always considered that to be of the utmost importance," Narcissa said, turning to her son to enlighten her.

The expression of acute embarrassment mingled with horror on Malfoy's face finally became too much for Hermione and she folded over, laughing so hard that her stomach hurt. When she finally had collected herself, she declined Mrs Malfoy's half-hearted offer of tea and sent a sharp look Malfoy's way.

"Quid pro quo, _Draco_," she reminded him, before walking out the door.

* * *

Their second wedding was very different to their first. There were flowers in abundance, Hermione was clad in white and Draco was bedecked in dress robes that seemed to be floating on the air. By mutual agreement and to Narcissa's chagrin, it was a private affair with only a few select guests. A ceremony on the lawn outside the Dowager house was to be followed by a wedding breakfast in the dining room.

Predictably, the seating plan had been exceedingly awkward to organise and had prompted Hermione to pursue another attempt to get Draco to cry off the whole thing.

"This is ridiculous! Most of them have tried to kill each other," she said, shoving the guest list under his nose. They were sitting at the big table in the study at the Dower house, surrounded by the trappings of a pure-blood wedding. At this stage, Hermione thought she could live quite happily if she never had to see another gold-plated invitation again.

Mrs Malfoy was feeling poorly and had been unable to join them. Hermione could only wish for a way to escape planning the most ill-conceived wedding since Mrs Zabini tied the knot with husband number six, before he succumbed to dragon pox a few hours later. The only thing worse than debating points of etiquette with Narcissa Malfoy was arguing with her son, Hermione decided. To add insult to injury, the subject of their argument was a celebration of the fact that they had a lifetime of more arguments to look forward to.

"Exaggerating as usual, Granger. That was poor, even coming from you," Draco replied, not even bothering to look at the list.

"Not everyone suffers from convenient amnesia when it comes to recent events, you know. Every single guest on my side fought in the war. On the winning side too, I might add."

"Hardly. I don't recall Krum taking part on either side, just to mention one exception," Draco said absently, as he continued to draft the order of service for the officiant's consideration. Reading upside down, Hermione saw that he had crossed out the part about just impediments, where those attending were asked if anyone objected to the marriage. It wouldn't do to give their guests any ideas.

"It was you who insisted on inviting Viktor, not me," she retorted. Hermione had kept up her correspondence with Victor until she went on the run. He had been relegated to the status of a fond memory and she rarely thought of him until a fierce-looking owl bearing a letter from Bulgaria appeared at her window a few weeks after her acquittal. Apparently, Viktor had approached the British authorities when she was convicted, attempting to challenge her sentence. Since he lacked the right connections it had been to no avail, but Hermione had been touched by his persistence. Viktor had always been very loyal to those he considered his friends.

Naturally, it was Draco who insisted that they couldn't pass over the chance of having an international Quidditch star attending their wedding. The more press they got, the more efficient their mutual undertaking would be, he argued. Hermione was forced to agree, despite her misgivings about having any guests there at all. At least, losing the argument meant that she could look forward to seeing her friend. She really didn't want to taint her pleasure by arguing with Malfoy over Viktor's presence again.

"I'll let you claim Auntie Muriel, she's hardly there for my sake," Hermione conceded, as she continued down the guest list. Muriel probably did count as someone who had fought on the right side, despite not making an appearance at the final battle. One did have to make allowances for the centenarians.

"How do you know my Great Auntie Muriel?" Draco lifted his head, genuinely astonished.

"She's Ron's aunt too. Returning to the situation at hand: there are two known Death Eaters on your side," he bowed ironically in acknowledgement, "not counting your mother, who certainly was at least a follower of Voldemort. I've no idea about your uncle Hilarius-"

"Great Uncle," he corrected, and she shot him a venomous look.

"_Great_ Uncle," Hermione over-emphasised, "Whatever about him, if I recall correctly the Greengrasses contributed rather generously to Voldemort when he was in power."

"I assume there is a point to all this?" Draco clearly expected that to wind her up, and he wasn't disappointed.

"The _point_ is, that nothing could conceivably bring all those people together without World War Three breaking out." Hermione ignored his contrived air of confusion at the Muggle term. She knew for a fact that he knew of the first two wars, and she had enough of dancing to his tune and rising to his constant little barbs. "It's utter nonsense to expect them to congregate to celebrate a- a joyous occasion like a wedding in peace. Ergo, it's also stupid to expect them to believe that we'd actually want to get married in the first place."

"Are you going back on your word?" If Draco raised his eyebrows superciliously one more time during this conversation, Hermione refused to be held accountable for her actions.

"No," she managed to get out, past her gritted teeth. Her parents would have been appalled at the tension she put her jaw under these days. "I'm merely appealing to your better judgement. A futile endeavour, I realise, but I thought I'd give it a go anyway."

It was far too late to get out of being married to Draco. Hermione knew that. Still, it was worth one last-ditch effort to avoid having to repeat their vows in front of her friends, who would all believe this was the first time. She had little hope of success; with the Malfoys, it was always about appearances.

Unwilling as she was to admit it, there was at least rudimentary logic behind the most ill-conceived guest list since the Banchory Bangers decided to invite the local giants to their post-match party. If no one else were in attendance at their wedding, it would inevitably lead to gossip about Imperius Curses and love potions, since it was common knowledge that they used to loathe each other. Despite their apparent success in convincing the public that they actually were in love, both of them had enemies who would pounce on any sign of weakness.

"Nonsense, Granger. As long as your admittedly poor acting skills hold up, we'll pull it off. Love conquers everything. Your all-encompassing love for me will carry the day, I'm sure," Draco drawled.

"Fine! If that's the way you want it, fine! Make your own bed, and don't come running to me when you figure out what an idiotic idea this was," Hermione snapped.

"Don't concern yourself, I certainly won't need to do any such thing."

"I will not be held responsible when Fleur hexes Zabini for not keeping his hands to himself, or Auntie Muriel says something cutting to your mother, or Goyle and Ron have a fistfight on the dance floor."

"We won't be having a dance floor, Granger - this isn't some common do down at the local pub. Don't get your knickers in a twist."

As always, Draco left her fuming. There was no one else, not even Ron, who could annoy her so thoroughly just by existing. When he actually made an effort, Hermione found it exceedingly difficult to reign in her irritation. She would have to learn how, or she had better start researching wizarding medication against stress before giving herself an ulcer.

Predictably, Draco didn't experience any last-minute change of heart and the day of their second wedding dawned. Hermione had considered going through the ordeal on a stiff upper lip alone; then, she decided that everything had a time and a place, and this occasion clearly merited getting completely stoned. Pottering around her flat getting ready, she was feeling pretty relaxed. She managed to hold on to her breezy calm even when Gregory Goyle poked his head through her fireplace.

"Granger, will you get your arse over here? Draco says we need to get started now!"

"Calm down, calm down - I'm coming. Get out of the way, please." She wrapped a cloak around her to protect her wedding gown from the ashes, and shouted out her destination into the fireplace.

In the hall at the Dower house, house-elves Hermione had never even seen before were milling around in a frantic hurry, directed by the Malfoy house-elf Miffy who appeared to be just as exacting as her mistress. With her lips tightly pressed together to communicate her disapproval of Hermione's slovenly ways, Miffy even found time to banish some flakes of ash from her hair before Bill announced his presence.

"It's not like you to be so relaxed, Hermione," he commented. Doubtlessly, Ron had been telling him about her frantic exam preparations.

Bill had been chosen out of the rather small pool of men who could walk her up the aisle, due to the scandalous implications of being given away by either of her single friends. Hermione didn't really know him that well, but she trusted him, and for a moment she was tempted to tell him the truth.

Her agreement with Malfoy didn't really stipulate who they could tell, but in a rare display of unanimity they had agreed to keep their arrangement as secret as possible. It was going to be hard enough to keep up appearances as it was, Hermione mused, as Bill escorted her down the garden path towards the officiant and her waiting husband, flanked by Theo Nott who was best man.

It had been a surprise to her that Nott and Draco got on. Apparently, it was a post-Hogwarts kind of friendship; the kind where none of the parties fully trusted the other one. Still, they met up to trade gossip and pretend that they had friends, as far as Hermione understood it.

Malfoy's ridiculously light hair shone bright in the August sunlight. He looked like a fallen angel, all sharp cheekbones and guarded eyes. Hermione had done her best with her decidedly average features and unmanageable hair, but she doubted that even a bona fide bridal glow of happiness would have made her look anything special next to Draco. Fortunately, this failed to fill her with dismay.

The ceremony was blessedly quick. Ron collapsed imperceptibly once they had been declared bonded for life, Hermione was still stoned enough not to care and Malfoy was too aware of watchful eyes to betray any of his true feelings, whatever they were.

The guests managed some creditable smiles for _The_ _Daily Prophet_ as the photographer snapped away. Hermione had furnished Rita Skeeter with her article in advance, so the reporter had nothing to do except jotting down the names of the witches and wizards posing for the group photograph. It posed no insurmountable challenge to her as she had libelled at least nine of them previously, and thus was well acquainted with both Viktor Krum's scowl and Mrs Zabini's voluptuousness.

Finally, the press was escorted off the premises, Luna graciously having promised to refrain from publishing anything that went on at the wedding breakfast, and they could all sit down to for the meal.

Hermione had nipped up to the upstairs loo to have another spiff, so she was facing the onslaught of the inevitable speeches with something near equanimity. It had come as a disappointment to her that speeches were considered indispensable at this sort of affair in the wizarding world too. All she could remember of the speeches at Bill and Fleur's wedding was that they had been short and sweet. There wouldn't be much sweetness in evidence today, but they were certainly hoping for short.

Seated between Bill and Draco at the antique dining table, Hermione was facing Viktor. He was making polite conversation with Daphne Greengrass' polished mother. Next to Viktor, Mrs Zabini was flirting with Charlie; as far as Hermione could tell, he appeared to be holding his own. It had definitely been wise to seat Neville next to Angelina instead; she had graciously come along to support Hermione even if George still refused to acknowledge her existence. Angelina had assured her that he would get over his sulk eventually, and in the meantime she would represent their family.

It had been useless to even bring up the wedding with Ginny, and to keep the peace Mrs Weasley had sent her regrets and a bulky wedding present. Percy had vociferously communicated his disapproval when Hermione and Draco got engaged, so it didn't come as a surprise when he turned down the invitation for him and Audrey. Percy was prepared to overlook most misdeeds, but apparently marrying a Malfoy was beyond the pale.

On Hermione's left, Bill was reaching behind Mrs Malfoy to nudge Theo Nott's back. Fortunately Nott hadn't fought in the war, or the first fight of the day may have broken out then. Many of the war veterans still reacted to unexpected physical contact by using their wand, and some of them had reflexes even Mad-Eye Moody would have applauded.

Awkwardly, Nott stood up and raised his wand to make a noise like a ringing bell. Everyone turned their attention to him, except Mrs Longbottom who continued talking to Great Auntie Muriel in a voice that was slightly too loud to be inconspicuous.

"-but he is of _excellent_ lineage, my dear! Such a match, if it wasn't for the war…" Nott looked amused, and let her finish. She didn't display any trace of embarrassment; Augusta Longbottom was a living embodiment of the tenet that if you lived long enough, you stopped caring about ephemeral things like what other people thought of you.

Nott introduced Bill, who stood up and cleared his throat loudly to claim everyone's attention.

"The first time I met Hermione," he started, "she had her nose buried in a book. I'd heard Ron talking about her as if she was a walking textbook. First, I thought it was her friends who dragged her along on their adventures, kicking and screaming. Then, one day, I discovered her rigging up an elaborate contraption of Extendable Ears, and finally I realised that there's a lot more to our Hermione." He went on to recount how he had seen Hermione grow up over the years, and didn't fail to mention her appearance at the Yule Ball.

"I wouldn't blame Draco if that was when he opened his eyes to see that there was more to Hermione than her brains. And the fact that she was an annoying Gryffindor, of course." To Hermione's astonishment, Draco looked a little embarrassed at the gentle jibe; it couldn't possibly be his true reaction. Time and again he had proved that he was an accomplished actor, she had better remember that. At least he was using his skills to her advantage this time, to convince her friends that this was for real.

Bill sat down amidst applause, after touching lightly on how he got to know Hermione better at Shell Cottage and after the war. Hermione kissed his cheek, touched despite herself; Bill had done his level best to stand in for her father, and carried it off admirably.

Oh Merlin, it was Draco's turn next.

Fortunately, his speech was most notable for what wasn't said. There was no mention of absent friends or the dearth of bridesmaids or any guests from the bride's family, just a short acknowledgement of the Weasleys and what they had meant to Hermione through the years. He thanked the other guests for joining the celebrations, and finally acknowledged his mother for her unstinting support. Hermione did actually believe that he was sincere, right then.

Finally, Draco conjured several bottles of champagne from the kitchen, which emitted sparks and shooting stars that lit up the room, and asked everyone to rise and toast Hermione for being kind enough to marry him despite his many failings.

His bride cast a quick look around the table, studying the expressions on their guests' faces. Ron looked plainly incredulous, Luna was serene and Angelina was gamely smiling. Great Uncle Hilarius was sneering openly. He wasn't exactly the doddering, well-meaning type; Mrs Malfoy had informed her that he used to be barred from most wizarding drinking establishments in Britain due to his propensity to challenge people to duels. Time had failed to sweeten his disposition.

"To the bride!" The unlikely crowd raised their glasses to Hermione and she tried to look bashful. For a short second it all felt real, and then an angry voice tore the illusion apart.

"You are wrong - he is lucky she vill have him, I think!" Viktor was jabbing a robust finger in Mrs Zabini's exquisite face, perilously close to one of the loose strands of her hair that were weaving lazily through the air. She had the most elaborate coiffure Hermione had ever seen; it would have made Marie-Antoinette jealous. Mrs Zabini had a sour look on her face, and was just about to respond when Blaise Zabini got involved.

"Why don't you keep your opinions to yourself, Krum? Didn't they teach you any manners at Durmstrang?" he sneered.

"Perhaps we should all-" Charlie Weasley started, but Viktor cut in again before he could finish.

"I think they didn't teach you vell at Hogwarts, if this one didn't learn that you do not insult your host!" From the look of chagrin on his face Viktor regretted rising to the bait immediately afterwards, but by then it was too late.

"What did she say?" Ron stood up, wand in his hand and cheeks red from anger and champagne.

"Don't talk to my mother like that!" Blaise was standing up as well, looking daggers at Krum.

"Calm down Blaise, please!" begged Daphne Greengrass, clinging on to his wand arm; Hermione recalled that she never had been particularly useful in an emergency.

"Lucinda always was a brazen hussy!" Mrs Longbottom thought she whispered to Mr Greengrass, but she spoke slightly too loud and everyone at their side of the table heard her. Including Blaise, who couldn't decide whether to challenge her too, or if he ought to concentrate on Krum.

"Gentlemen…" Bill had stood up as well; he was just a little too far from his brother to give him a good kick, as he clearly was aching to do. As satisfying as that would be to watch, it still wouldn't solve the problem with the other two idiots.

"_What did she say?"_ Great Aunt Muriel asked anyone around her who still was sitting down.

"You're all being ridiculous!" Mrs Zabini laughed airily, but there was an insincere ring to it and she failed to defuse the situation.

Hermione closed her eyes and counted to three (she didn't dare going to ten in case things escalated even further); then she raised her wand. A bang, as loud as a Muggle gunshot, startled everyone momentarily.

Hermione opened her mouth to speak before the cacophony erupted again, but found it hijacked by Draco who was kissing her passionately. His fingers ruthlessly dug into her flesh, as he wordlessly urged her to put on a good show for their dumbstruck audience. After a very long minute they separated breathlessly. Looking at their speechless guests, Malfoy smiled wolfishly and asked:

"Ready for the best man's speech, then?"

After that, the rest of the celebrations were uneventful. Theodore Nott delivered a short speech, which, while short on details about the happy couple's supposed romance, did deliver some amusing anecdotes about Malfoy and his mishaps when venturing into the Muggle world for the first time. Hermione hadn't realised quite how comfortable Malfoy had become in the Muggle world, and resolved to find out exactly what he had been up to there.

As the party broke up and the guests said their goodbyes, Hermione made sure to be especially solicitous towards Mrs Zabini. Viktor knew that he was forgiven when Hermione hugged him and kissed him on the cheek before he departed; he was still looking rather sheepish over his faux pas, however.

Afterwards, Draco and Hermione inspected their presents as the house-elves cleaned up around them, the traces of the feast disappearing so quickly that it was difficult to believe it had actually happened.

Hermione had changed back into her normal clothes again. She had no intention to start prancing around in robes all the time, even if she technically was a Malfoy in the wizarding world, too, now. She wondered if anyone had informed Malfoy senior about his son's nuptials yet; seeing his reaction would almost make the whole thing worth it. After briefly considering the idea, Hermione had discarded the notion that he was in on whatever plans his son had concocted. The Lucius Malfoy she had known would never have stooped to add a Muggle-born witch to the family tree, however desperate he would have been.

"So, what now?" she reluctantly asked her husband, who was leafing through _One Minute Feasts - It's Magic_ with all outward signs of fascination.

Without looking at the accompanying card, Hermione had known that it had been a present from either Charlie or Ron. It was exactly what their mother would recommend as a gift to a newlywed couple. It would certainly have come in useful, had she been marrying anyone other than a Malfoy who came with a full complement of house-elves.

Draco had made it a condition of their deal that Hermione would not force him to get rid of the house-elves. Since she had made him agree to neither become or pledge allegiance to the next Dark Lord, she had found it expedient to compromise on the house-elf front. For the time being, at least.

"Now, we plot how to overthrow the Ministry," Draco said, closing the book with a bang that made Miffy jump.

-oOo-

* * *

"It's funny how the world turns, when you think about it," Hermione said pensively over breakfast on a misty day in October, putting _The_ _Daily Prophet_ to the side.

"Do enlighten me." Despite his frequent use of profanities, Draco sometimes sounded like he had stepped out of a 19th century novel. It suited him; it complemented his Victorian morality rather nicely, Hermione thought surly.

"When it really came down to it you weren't a murderer, for all that you joined Voldemort and took the Dark Mark. But I was. Who would have thought, eh?" Something like anger flashed across Draco's face, but it was gone before she could be certain.

"You did put those spots on Marietta Edgecombe's face, after all. Severus was rather impressed with that, both with the jinx and that you actually considered the possibility that someone would betray you."

"Really?" Hermione was pretty chuffed; it wasn't every day you were complemented on your deviousness by the departed Head of Slytherin.

Draco spun the conversation away in that direction, volunteering some information about Snape that she never would have come across except from one of his Slytherins, while thinking that she had landed on the very reason he took an interest in her in the first place, with her usual unerring accuracy.

Hermione Granger was everything Draco was supposed to have been; the brightest witch of their generation, a friend of Potter's, and a formidable fighter. She had caught him utterly off his guard when she slapped him in their third year at Hogwarts, just as she had when she revealed how she had blackmailed Rita Skeeter. When push came to shove, Hermione would do what had to be done, as anyone who expected her do-gooder tendencies to translate into meekness found out to their cost.

Draco remembered that she slapped him over some slight on Hagrid, the moronic groundskeeper. At the time, whom she chose to defend shocked him almost as much as being hit in such a Muggle way, and he had dismissed it as utterly Gryffindor, and therefore stupid, to waste your sympathy on someone so inferior.

The intervening years taught Draco about the value of loyalty, and that what you dismiss as sentimentality on the way up may be the difference between life and death on the way down. Snape had always preached the importance of sticking together, no matter what, to his house. The first time Pansy Parkinson gave him a textbook cut direct after the war, Draco had finally appreciated what Snape had been trying to achieve.

With Slytherin linked so closely to the Dark Lord and the losing side in the war, some of his former housemates had no time for those further down the pecking order. It was each Slytherin to their own, as they frenetically tried to distance themselves from anyone who may implicate them in the disgrace of their house. The collapse of house loyalty was enthusiastically fanned by the Ministry, which regarded it as a component of its strategy to divide and conquer.

It made it doubly difficult for Draco to do anything to redeem Snape in the eyes of the wizarding world. To Draco, Snape was the ultimate example of what Slytherin loyalty and cunning could achieve, but he was well aware that he was possibly the only person in the world of that opinion.

With the exception of Hermione.

Snape was probably rotating in his shallow grave over the prospect of having his reputation restored by Hermione Granger, whom he always considered an unmitigated pain in the arse when he was alive, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

Hermione had already started to research her book, but Draco was in no hurry. It would be years before it could conceivably be published. There was plenty of work to be going on with before then, to ensure that the wizarding world wouldn't dismiss her as a crackpot peddling conspiracy theories even _The Quibbler_ would discard as too far-fetched.

There was also, of course, the small matter of his other plans.

-oOo-

* * *

**I do love reviews, in case I didn't mention that before...**


	16. Chapter 15 - Children Of The Revolution

**Thanks again to MysticDew, who has beta'd every single chapter not just once, but twice! Any remaining mistakes are my own.**

* * *

**Chapter 15 **

**Children Of The Revolution**

** -oOo-**

**11AM, the 4****th**** of December 2005 – The Burrow, Ottery St. Catchpole, Devon**

"Well, this is it. Welcome to the first meeting of the League of the Stag," Ron said, with less ceremony than Draco felt that the occasion merited.

The name had caused some controversy. Hermione had voted for the Committee to Unelect the Minister for Magic, but no one else got the joke. To the others' surprise, Draco hadn't minded whatever the final name turned out to be. As long as it achieved what he wanted, he didn't give a toss if they insisted on calling it the Order of The Phoenix For Slow Learners.

He had voted down some of Weasley's more harebrained suggestions, however; guilds were made up of craftsmen, not subversives, and 'society' made it sound as if they were intent on knitting and crocheting rather than plotting. He didn't particularly like 'league' either. It suggested Quidditch and not revolution, but agreeing to it had been the quickest way of ending the row that broke out after Weasley was fool enough to suggest 'brotherhood', which Hermione had taken violent offence at.

"You know why we're here, so we'll get started. Just one thing first. For those of you who weren't at Hogwarts with us, you really should take the oath you took seriously." Ron looked around at the disparate crown; quite a few of them wouldn't know the details about the DA. "If you have a problem-," he continued.

"Or if someone is blackmailing you-" Draco broke in, earning himself a sharp glance from George Weasley.

"-Come and talk about it, and we'll sort it out. You really don't want to find out what happens if you go to the Ministry instead. Trust me," Ron finished.

"Stop being oblique, Ron." Draco snorted under his breath; Weasley probably didn't even know what the word meant, but that didn't stop Hermione from admonishing him and spelling out the consequences.

"When she turned in the DA to Umbridge after signing a parchment I had charmed, Marietta Edgecombe ended up having 'SNEAK' written across her face for more than a year." Hermione continued dryly: "I haven't exactly mellowed with age, and the stakes are a lot higher these days."

"So we're all in this together," Ron stated, with an unexpected ring of authority. "I know we didn't all fight on the same side in the war," now that was an understatement, Draco thought surly, "but we've all got the same goal now. All of you are here because someone else trusted you enough to bring you in. You've all signed the charter, so it doesn't matter what you did seven years ago, or twenty for that matter. This is now." He inspected the troops, brow furrowed. "Where's Neville, by the way?"

Draco had been wondering the same thing for the past half hour. As if on cue, there was a noise in the hall. Mrs Weasley disappeared to investigate and returned shortly amidst a lot of fussing with Neville and Mrs Longbottom, who was looking much older than Draco remembered her from school.

"Neville, for Merlin's sake- This isn't a bloody family outing!" Ron moaned to his harassed-looking friend, but it was Mrs Longbotton who answered him.

"I'm quite aware of the purpose of this meeting, young man. How do I join?" Ron looked around for support but none was forthcoming; he'd have to do this himself. Cowards, the lot of them. Ignoring Draco's smirk, he tried:

"Mrs Longbottom, you're not exactly as young as you used to be-"

"Stuff and nonsense! No one told Albus Dumbledore he was too old to fight Voldemort, so I don't see how my age is of any consequence. I hear there's an enchanted charter; where do I sign?"

Defeated, Ron handed it over. Everyone knew that Neville's grandmother had put Dawlish in hospital for weeks in the last war before fighting in the Battle of Hogwarts; who was he to keep her out? Besides, she had some very useful connections, as Hermione's timely kick on his shin had reminded him.

"Excellent," he sighed. "Welcome to the League. Anyone else want to sign up? Seamus, would your mam want to join in, since she missed out on all the fun the last time? Malfoy, d'you want to give Uncle Hilarius a shout? He's only a hundred and thirty, plenty of life in him yet!"

A younger Neville would have blushed; the older version just wrapped a plaid around his grandmother's legs and smiled.

-O-

* * *

Unsurprisingly, Ron was the first person Hermione approached with her misgivings about the current direction of the Ministry. He had listened patiently as she tried to put enough of Malfoy's insinuations and her own suspicions into words, while steering clear of why it was so desperately important to get things right this time. There would be plenty of time for that later; for now, all she wanted was an opinion about the Ministry from someone she actually trusted.

The possibility that Malfoy had manipulated her into doing exactly what he wanted was keeping Hermione awake at night. It didn't leave her as the sun rose; instead, it kept niggling at her through the day, as she was cutting off the threads to her Muggle life one by one. If Ron agreed that there was cause for concern, she would be immensely relieved; then her own judgement wouldn't have gone to pieces completely.

Hermione did try to remember his shortcomings; this was Ron, after all, who was fully capable of holding on to his prejudices in the face of a dozen inconvenient truths. He still hadn't hexed Malfoy since she officially started seeing him, however, and she took that to be an encouraging sign.

In the end, much more poured out of her than she had intended to say. When she had finally finished talking, she looked at Ron anxiously, waiting for his reaction.

"You should speak to Seamus," was his laconic response.

"Seamus Finnigan?" Hermione spluttered. "What's he got to do with anything?"

"You really ought talk to him about this."

"Ron, he's going out with Ginny. He's hardly going to talk to me!" She regretted saying it as soon as she heard the words coming out of her mouth. It was unfair to put Ron on the spot, and usually she scrupulously adhered to their tacit agreement and avoided the subject completely. Ron, however, appeared unperturbed.

"I'll owl him. He'll definitely talk to you."

Hermione irritably shook her head.

"That's great and all, Ron, but I didn't bring this up to set up a Gryffindor reunion. What do you think? Am I crazy?" she asked, almost plaintively. If there was anyone she would trust to answer her honestly, it was Ron. After all, he had never hesitated to cheerfully inform her that her ideas were bonkers before.

Ron looked at her as if she was mad, and Hermione didn't know whether to feel relieved that she probably had been wrong, or dismayed that she might have to fight this battle without him.

"Well, obviously there's something rotten going on! I'd hardly have spent almost seven years in the same ward as Gilderoy Lockhart, only to have you being forced into a deal with Ferret Boy to get me out if everything had been rosy, had I?"

"Well, no," she replied, taken aback.

"You'd have to be blind not to see that the Ministry's using Harry the way Scrimgeour wanted to. He would've hated that."

"Yes, he would have," Hermione agreed, remembering how angry she had been when she saw that ridiculous statue at the Ministry.

"And then there's the way they treated you. And my family," Ron continued. "So it's not exactly far-fetched to think there's something bigger going on. And let's face it, when was the Ministry ever full of fluffy bunnies and- and fighting for house-elf rights, and things?"

"Ron, if you can't take this seriously-"

"But I am! When has the Ministry ever been on the right side, in our experience? Never, that's when! Even after the first war, they let Lucius Malfoy swan around as if he owned the place-" Belatedly realising that Hermione was marrying Lucius Malfoy's son and that there was precious little either of them could do about it, Ron changed tack. "All I'm saying is that if I have to pick between you or the Ministry, I'll pick you. Any time. That's why you should talk to Seamus, because I think you'd be interested to hear what he's been banging on about for the last few years."

"You're a brilliant friend, Ron. Really."

The top of his ears turned read, but he gamely replied:

"You're not too bad yourself, you know," without descending into an incoherent stutter, as he had been want to when he was younger.

* * *

Hermione and Seamus were always friendly at Hogwarts; she had always been slightly jealous of Harry and Ron for sharing their dormitory with Neville, Dean and Seamus. She never really found much common ground with Lavender and Parvati, even before the Won-Won debacle.

For a while, Seamus' refusal to believe in Harry when he said that Voldemort had returned made Hermione lump him in with the rest of the idiots of the wizarding world. By joining the DA and handsomely admitting that he had been wrong, Seamus redeemed himself magnificently in her eyes.

Since her return, Hermione had seen him in passing. Slowly, she was coming to the realisation that if you spent any time at all in the wizarding world you would bump into anyone you had ever meet sooner or later, assuming they were neither a recluse or in Azkaban. Since Seamus was going out with Ginny, and Hermione knew well enough what Ginny felt about her, she hadn't tried to approach him.

Soon after her magic had been restored, Hermione had received a Howler from Ginny. If Draco hadn't put up silencing wards around her flat she could have been in hot water for violating the Statute of Secrecy, so piercing was the sound of Ginny's voice screaming recriminations.

The prospect of seeing Seamus again was therefore sufficient to make Hermione feel the way she imagined other people did when the were faced with an upcoming visit to the dentist. Ron hadn't always been the best judge of people, so she didn't completely trust his assurances that Seamus would be happy to see her.

Ginny and Seamus lived in the wizarding part of Dublin, within Apparating distance of Ginny's Quidditch team which was based in Ballycastle at the northernmost tip of the island of Ireland. Hermione had never been to Dublin before; when she first started travelling, it hadn't been exotic enough to pique her interest. Later on, the risk of bumping into someone she met there in the UK put her off. Now, she didn't mind the chance of going to Ireland at all, not even when taking the discomfort of an International Portkey into account.

For someone who had travelled with Ryanair, the inconvenience, nausea and disorientation was vastly preferable to being asked for the fifth time if you really didn't want to buy a scratch card, or having to wear three jumpers to get your bag onto the plane without having to pay twice what the ticket cost in the first place.

Wizards didn't know how good they had it, Hermione thought grimly as she steadied herself against the wall in the corridor of the International Magical Transport Office in Dublin. Accidentally, she nudged the poster welcoming her to Ireland with 'Céad míle fáilte' hanging on the wall; it erupted in hundreds of shamrocks that fluttered down to the floor. Shamefaced, Hermione quickly cleaned them up with a flock of her wand and went on her way, out onto the busy streets of Dublin in search of Seamus. He had told Ron he would meet her in a Muggle pub, O'Neill's, where they wouldn't risk being overheard by any wizards.

Once she entered the pub she understood why Seamus picked it; it was a maze of stairs and nooks and crannies, crammed full with what seemed to be a mix of tourists, students (didn't they look very young to be drinking? Perhaps it was just a sign that she was getting older) and wizened old men who seemed to have been born clutching a pint between gnarled fists.

It took Hermione almost ten minutes to make her way through the crowd of eager drinkers. Finally, she saw someone who looked like Seamus in a corner; he was nursing an almost empty pint of Guinness while reading the Muggle evening paper. She got drinks in at the bar as a sort of peace offering, and quietly slid into the seat opposite him, pushing his pint towards him.

"Hi Seamus," she almost whispered, in an attempt to be discreet. Seamus wasn't having any of it.

"Jaysus!" he exclaimed, almost falling off his chair. "For fuck's sake, are you trying to scare the life out of me?"

"Sorry! I'm sorry," Hermione quickly apologised, half-afraid he would call the whole thing off.

"S'alright, just give us some warning the next time! I'm not as young as I once was," he wheezed theatrically, clutching his heart. She laughed, relieved to find something of the old Seamus in him.

"Hermione," he said then, soberly, while looking her over with searching eyes. "It's good to see ye."

"You too, Seamus." They fell quiet for a few seconds; the sound of the busy bar, hundreds of voices rising and falling punctuated by occasional laughter and shouting, failed to fill the silence between them.

Hermione's first instinct was to apologise, to take the guilt hanging between them like an unspoken argument upon herself, but then she rebelled. It was between her and Harry, and Ron, and maybe the Ministry and the rest of the Weasleys, and possibly even the bloody Dursleys, but she refused to owe a debt to every single person who had known Harry for the rest of her life. Maybe it was Ron's influence that made her so certain; it could even be the deal she had struck with Malfoy. Surely it was sufficient for anyone to be dealing with one ominous undertaking casting a shadow over one's life, at a time? Somehow, Hermione just couldn't find it in her to bear the responsibility for Seamus losing his friend as well, alongside everything else that had been lost.

Instead, she raised her chin and waited for him to speak. It didn't take long.

"You look different," he observed.

"So do you," Hermione retorted. Seamus' sandy hair had retreated somewhat from his forehead, and he had a long, narrow scar down his chin that she vaguely remembered was a wound when they last met at Hogwarts. Even sitting down, she could see that he had filled out, becoming more like a man and less of a gangly boy. Like most of them, Seamus looked older than he really was. Hermione wondered if time would catch up with their generation later on, or if the war had changed them so utterly that they never would be quite normal again.

"You're looking good, though," she added, truthfully. "How have you been?"

Seamus looked around them and muttered something she couldn't make out, followed by a Muffliato Ginny must have taught him.

"So," he announced. "We're grand now, no one can overhear us. That's why I picked this place; it's so busy no one'll pay any attention to us. Anyway, I've been grand. Set up me own shop now, here in Dublin."

"Really? What are you selling?" Hermione asked, intrigued; she hadn't been to wizarding Dublin yet, but she had read that it was big - about the size of Hogsmeade.

"Well, I'm mostly doing Weasley gear so far - from George's shop, you know? I've got a sideline in stuff for the Yanks though, shamrocks and the like. Me dad grows it at home in Clare, and then I wave me wand at it to make it look pretty."

Hermione smiled, and he grinned back at her, continuing:

"We've got Aran jumpers and stuff as well. Seems to be doing well enough, even if I'm only at it for a year or so."

"That sounds great."

"Ginny's helping out a bit too. She really likes it over here."

"Well, that's good," Hermione said, and they were quiet for a few moments.

"I hear you got engaged?" Seamus stated more than asked.

"Yes." Hermione had suspected it would come up, but she didn't exactly welcome it. Bringing up the imminent prospect of her joining the Malfoy family was hardly going to make him more inclined to talk to her.

"To Malfoy, yeah?" Seamus asked, in a would-be unconcerned manner.

"Oh, come off it, please. Anyone with eyes and ears knows that the Gryffindor Know-It-All is going to marry the Prince of all things slithery, so spare me." She glared at him, and he looked slightly embarrassed.

"Right then," he said with surprisingly good grace. "Me gran used to say that if you're in love with a dunghill, you'll never see a bad straw in it. I suppose that's true enough. Best of luck to you, so." 'You're going to need it' hung unspoken in the air, but Hermione chose to ignore it.

"So what's the crack with this league thing Ron was telling me about?" Seamus asked.

"The what, now?"

"The crack? The story?" Finally she twigged it.

"Oh, what we're doing, you mean?"

"Yes, Hermione! You didn't use to be this slow," he told her sternly, and she wasn't quite sure if he was joking before she saw his eyes. They were full of mischief and she felt a rush of warmth for him, for the Seamus she had shared Chocolate Frogs and interminable double History of Magic on Tuesday afternoons with; who had whinged about Slughorn being a prat and Snape being horribly unfair; and who had apologised and joined the DA when many other people would have pretended that they had done nothing wrong.

She smiled at him then, a proper smile, and it felt as if something fell into place between them. It didn't matter so much anymore that they were on opposite sides in the great Weasley family feud, or that Hermione was the unwilling cause of it. They had been friends long before all that.

"Don't come here going all Irish on me. You've clearly gone native now, forgetting all about the Queen's English," she teased him back, and was surprised to see him utterly taken aback at her words. Seamus waved it away when he noticed her expression, but she was still puzzled by his reaction.

Since Ron had vouched for him, Hermione briefly told Seamus about her concerns about the current direction of the Ministry and her fears that it was not only misrepresenting the fallen, but also doing nothing to reduce tensions within the wizarding world. Seamus listened, without seeming to find much new in what she was putting forward, until her carefully prepared speech trailed off.

"D'you know much about Muggle history, Hermione?" he asked, somewhat unexpectedly.

"Well, I've a basic understanding, I hope-"

"How about Ireland, do you know your Irish history?" When she was unceremoniously dumped in the Muggle world at eighteen, Hermione's Muggle education had been decidedly flimsy. After her fifth year at Hogwarts, when matters got more out of hand in the wizarding world, her summer reading had been put aside for more urgent research. It had taken her years to catch up again after the war; fortunately, long hours at the reception desk were amenable to copious reading.

"I- Well, I know about the Famine, and the Troubles I suppose, but I'm not really sure about the details…" As much as she hated admitting her ignorance, Seamus clearly had something to say and Hermione's vague recall of some poems by Yeats probably wasn't what he was looking for. Wait, Wellington had been Irish, hadn't he? "If there's anything specific, you'll need to tell me about it, I'm afraid," she admitted.

Fortunately, her confession didn't seem to disconcert him overly.

"Right so. No worries, Hermione – Ginny thinks Cromwell is a broom polish brand. Anyway," Seamus took a deep breath, before launching into his impromptu history lesson. "As you may or may not know, there was a War of Independence in Ireland just after the First World War. It was fought – bitterly fought - for almost three years, until the Irish rebels signed a peace treaty with Britain. It almost gave us our independence from Britain, for the first time in seven hundred years. Almost." He swigged down the last inch of his stout before continuing.

"Now, to some people who fought in the war, anything less than full independence was unacceptable. A betrayal of everyone who had died for Irish freedom. Others thought it was a war they just couldn't win, so they had to take what they could get and make the best of it. The thing was, to get peace they had to agree to partition – letting Britain keep Northern Ireland," he explained, catching Hermione's slightly confused expression before she got hopelessly lost. "You'd know what happened in the North," he said, and Hermione nodded, remembering angry politicians with incomprehensible accents on the telly, TV footage of distraught people digging through rubble after bomb blasts in their shirt sleeves, and more recently Good Friday agreements and peace at last.

"What you probably don't know is that a civil war started down here in the South, just a few months after the treaty with Britain was signed. People who fought the Brits together were suddenly on different sides, killing each other. Brother fighting against brother, friend against friend… Sounds familiar?" Seamus asked with a bitter tone to his voice, and all Hermione could was to nod.

"The treaty side won the civil war, but the anti-treaty side ended up running the country most of the time afterwards. Still does, actually."

Somehow a second round of drinks had made its way to their table. Seamus grabbed his pint and took a long sip, as if he was playing for time. Hermione sipped on her red wine; it came in a small bottle destined to give her a headache, if previous experience was any indication. At least it had a cheerful label with something Antipodean on it. She pushed away the image of her parents' faces as they rose unbidden before her, as they always seemed to do when anything Australian came her way.

Seamus was ready to resume his tale.

"So you can imagine what happened in Ireland. All those people who believed in Irish independence, fighting each other instead of the Black and Tans all of a sudden," he said and Hermione nodded, even though she had no idea who the Black and Tans had been or why they were pertinent to the discussion.

"People didn't forget, and they didn't forgive each other either. It's more than eighty years ago now, and some people still haven't forgotten which side your grandfather fought on in the civil war!"

He was all fired up now, eyes shining with indignation. "Sure, half the TD's - members of parliament here-" he explained quickly, "are the grandchildren of people who fought in the civil war. Doesn't matter if you're on the take or thick as a brick. People'll vote for you anyway." Seamus' voice was thick with anger. "Civil war politics messed up everything, so we never figured out how to do things properly." He was getting louder and louder, and Hermione was quite sure he didn't realise that he was banging his fist on the table for emphasis. "This country is getting destroyed by pettiness and grudges and gombeenism, and all we seem to care about is making money!"

He calmed down somewhat, and managed a shrug. "Of course, for wizards it doesn't matter. Ireland is just another part of the UK - we're too small to make it on our own. Me dad's family was always big into politics, so I grew up hearing about it from the Muggle side. You probably won't believe this, but a cousin of mine's uncles didn't speak to him for three years after he told them who he voted for in the election."

"Who did he vote for?" Hermione asked, astonished. Death Eaters?

"He went against what his own granddad fought for, you see. Voted for the other side. They're speaking now, though. That was a few years ago," he added, and Hermione tried to get her head around that for a while. Once she remembered Percy's defection in the middle of the war, she found it depressingly easy.

"I think I understand why Ron said I should talk to you," she said with a sigh. "When did you say the civil war ended in Ireland?"

"1923."

"Great. So we should be over the worst by… 2080 then?" For a long time, Hermione had known that it wouldn't just be a matter of dusting themselves off and pick up the pieces after the war, but it was rather depressing to realise just how long it could actually take.

"Hardly. Douglas Pickering was over a hundred and fifty by the time he retired as Minister of Magic, remember? Our generation will probably still be around by in 2080, never mind our children." Seamus looked at her with a crooked smile. "If you disregard my personal feelings about the tosspot, you've probably done more than anyone else in the last seven years just by agreeing to marry a Malfoy."

"You know me - always willing to step into the breech," she answered, half joking and half serious.

This time Hermione kept her eyes on the table, but she still couldn't quite work out how the fresh drinks had got there. There were more important things to consider, however.

"Now you know where I'm coming from," Seamus told her. "I won't stand by and do nothing when I know how it can turn out," he said, with the same mulish expression he used to get when he played Wizard's Chess and was losing to Ron again. "When I came back from the war, me dad sat me down and explained until he was sure I got it. It's like the civil war sucked up all the air in Ireland, and we couldn't think about anything else for generations afterwards. None of ye would know even about it, so I've been banging on about our civil war to wizards ever since. Not that anyone seemed to listen. I suppose Ron did, once he woke up."

"Yes," Hermione agreed; Ron had apparently been the only person to understand how important Seamus' realisations were. She wondered who else Ron had been paying attention to when no one else had.

-O-

* * *

Seamus took Hermione to see Dean, and Dean suggested contacting Ernie Macmillan, in a pattern that eventually enveloped most of what once was Dumbledore's Army. Ron roped in most of his family, or at least those who still were on speaking terms with Hermione. It cost him much soul-searching, but eventually he did approach Percy. The rest of the family had had seven years to reconcile themselves to his return to the fold, but to Ron Percy's defection still rankled. It was only when Bill quietly reminded him that he had walked out on Harry and Hermione himself during the war that Ron shamefacedly went to see his older brother.

Meanwhile, Hermione expanded her circle of former Hogwarts friends and members of the Phoenix. The lack of trust she encountered seemed to give truth to every word Seamus had said. Her contemporaries trusted those they had fought alongside, and those who could be vouched for by someone in their turn – but no one else.

It worried her immensely; how could they even start trying to rebuild their world again, if people behaved as if they were living in the Dark Ages? And yet, even Hermione thought Malfoy was joking first when he suggested bringing Theodore Nott, formerly of Slytherin and neutral in the war, along to the first meeting of the League.

Slowly, they assembled a list of wizards and witches willing to swear allegiance to Hermione's carefully drafted principles of democracy and accountability and freedom.

To her intense irritation, Malfoy didn't pay them much heed. He seemed to be concerned only about practicalities; did Terry Boot work for the Department of Mysteries? How wide was the readership of _The Quibbler_, and could Luna be convinced to tone down the coverage of the more improbable creatures in favour of increasing the circulation? Could Malcolm MacDougal be trusted, even though his sister was an Auror?

"Doesn't it matter to you, what we're actually fighting for?" Hermione asked him one day in exasperation.

"No," Draco replied almost cheerfully, as he Levitated three moth-eaten volumes to his desk while paying no attention to Hermione glowering at him, adorned as she was with ink-stained fingers and an outraged expression. "If I've learnt one thing, it's that the intended outcome and the actual result are separated by more than good intentions. Nowadays, I'm all about the end result."

"Well, isn't that just dandy for you." Hermione made a sour face at his back.

"Besides, I've got you looking after the principles. Don't tell me you've lost your idealism already." It was more a statement than a question.

"Not at all. I still believe in house-elf rights and freedom for all sentient creatures," she retorted.

"How fortunate that I'm here to divert your energies to worthier causes," Draco drawled as the books landed on his desk with a satisfying thud, and Hermione had to steel herself not to hex him.

Eventually, she had come up with something sufficiently rousing for the troops, such as they were, while staying true in some fashion to her increasingly tattered ideals.

The offspring of well-meaning Guardian readers, Hermione had never really questioned her instinctive commitment to democracy. However, it was somehow easier to embrace the concept in the Muggle population, whose sheer size made the average voter almost irrelevant and consequently rendered their level of stupidity immaterial, than in the wizarding population, where one single article by Rita Skeeter could provoke public opinion sufficiently to force the Minister of Magic into action, regardless of how dim-witted.

Now, at the inaugural meeting of the League, Hermione found herself surrounded by wizards and witches she had gone to school with, their relatives and quite a few unknown faces; mostly friends of Bill and Charlie who left Hogwarts long before her arrival, all of whom were concerned with the current direction of the Ministry.

To her, gathering a group like this had seemed like a perilous and ultimately pointless enterprise. As if they were trying to recreate the third emanation of the Order of the Phoenix in the manner of a cargo cult, trying to summon Dumbledore from the dead to guide them. Hermione's objections had been overruled, first by Ron and then by Draco and Seamus. They had all pointed out that acting as a group made sense if they actually wanted to achieve something. They would be much stronger together than on their own.

"The Ministry won't just say 'It's a fair cop, guv,' and realise the error of their ways, you know," Draco had pointed out to Hermione with his customary mix of unswerving accuracy and slight disdain for her intellectual prowess. "If this undertaking will have any chance of success, we'll need to seize any advantages we can get. You can be sure that the other side won't hesitate to do anything in their power to stop us."

"Do you normally speak like you have a broom stuck up your arse, or is this a special occasion?" Ron had wondered in a would-be amiable voice, but even he was forced to agree with Malfoy's analysis.

Ideally, Hermione would have liked to come out and run an open campaign against the Ministry, calling for reform. Almost a decade after the fall of Voldemort, it didn't seem too much to ask for that skulduggery no longer be required. Maybe that would be the case in 2080. Right now, she was not going to gamble on the goodwill of the same organisation that had kept Ron in St. Mungo's to control the agenda after the war.

Instead, Hermione, Ron and Draco had drafted a strategy using _The Quibbler_ to expose Ministry incompetence and corruption, in order to galvanise public opinion into demanding change. Draco had promised to furnish _The Quibbler_ with enough stories to keep going until they ran out of ink.

The others forbore from asking any detailed questions about where exactly he got his information. It was becoming evident that the demise of the Malfoy fortune had been exaggerated, as Draco seemed to be capable to maintain whatever network of contacts and spies his father must have amassed as well as financing the League. Incidentally, Draco was also paying the mortgage on Hermione's flat. It hadn't exactly been her idea marry him and re-enter the wizarding world, so she didn't let her principles trouble her overmuch.

The general reaction to their plan when presented to the League was muted agreement; most of them had resigned themselves to watch things going to the dogs from the sidelines, so they were quite relieved to be doing something even if the pace was going to be glacial.

Lee Jordan didn't agree.

"Is that it? You're just going to let the Ministry walk all over you and write articles in _The_ _Quibbler_," the tone of his voice made his low opinion of the publication quite clear and Hermione winced, "about how dreadful it all is?" Lee's eyes swept over the room, picking out Weasleys all over the place. "In all likelihood, they let your dad bleed to death so he wouldn't be in their way! You think you're going to fix that by getting people up in arms about how they're getting overcharged by the Goblins, with the Ministry's approval?" he asked, referring to the draft article that had been handed around the room.

George's face turned bright red at his words and Ginny made as if to stand up from her chair by the fireplace. Bill twitched but didn't speak; in the end it was Ron who answered calmly.

"The last thing Dad would've wanted us to do would be to rush in to take over the Ministry with drawn wands. Even if we could. Don't you see that we'd be in exactly the same mess in another ten years, only we'd be in charge instead of them?"

Lee appeared unconvinced.

"I fought against both Voldemort and Grindelwald," the reedy voice of Mrs Longbottom piped up, "and I agree with you, young man. It was all too easy for Voldemort to take over a second time." A murmur of assent from the older members of the group rose from the room, although none of them had perhaps been as well-connected or as well-placed to observe the inside of the Ministry as Augusta Longbottom.

"As long as a small group of people can control the Ministry, it'll be vulnerable to manipulation. We've got to stop papering over the cracks and start fixing the system instead," Seamus said.

"That's why Hermione put in all this stuff about democracy," Ron filled in, as if he was showing off his new puppy.

"And the Muggle world is of course perfect, in every way?" Hannah Abbott asked, with a sharpness Hermione wouldn't have expected from her.

"No, it's not," Hermione readily admitted. "I actually had a quote here somewhere, about that…" She dug around her book bag, while Ron's loud groaning generated a few laughs to lighten the atmosphere.

"Here! It's by Winston Churchill," Hermione announced, triumphantly pulling out the scrap of parchment she had been searching for. The name seemed to be familiar to at least half the room.

"'Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe,'" she read out in her clear voice. "'No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.'" Hermione suddenly felt very tired. "We thought we could at least give it a shot in the wizarding world, since the current form of government hasn't been too successful."

"Since you've all signed the charter, I assume you agree with Hermione," Ron said, taking control of the conversation again.

"And him?" Lee, not quite satisfied yet, asked as he pointed at Draco, who was facing the scrutiny looking supremely unconcerned. "He took the Dark Mark! What the hell is he doing here?"

"He's here because he agrees with the rest of us. Hermione has spoken for him. Don't you trust her?" Ron asked, and the question hung uncomfortably in the suddenly charged air of the room. There was at least one Weasley there who didn't trust Hermione. If Ginny spoke up now, the whole enterprise could start falling apart. Theodore Nott wasn't looking too comfortable either, Hermione noticed, as she did her best to put on a show of unconcern.

"Stop being daft, Jordan. Don't you get it?" an unfamiliar voice broke in. The focus of the room shifted to the corner by the fireplace, which normally housed the wireless. Now, it was occupied by a dark girl with a disdainful expression on her face. It took Hermione longer than it should have to place her. Tracey Davis, she remembered at last: Slytherin, never particularly talkative, although she always seemed to be watching intently from a corner somewhere.

"You need allies, and you can't pick and choose right now. Just deal with it," Tracey delivered in condescending tones, as if she was bored with the conversation already. "Slytherins have been treated like dirt by the Ministry since the war - use it!"

"You fought at Hogwarts," Dean Thomas said suddenly. "I saw you - you were fighting on our side!" The look Tracey gave him should have turned him into ice.

"I fought against Voldemort, you dolt. As I recall, it wasn't a Gryffindor-only party," she snapped.

"But you were on the right side." Dean gesticulated at Draco with a dismissive wave of his hand, "He wasn't. "

Apparently, this was the moment Draco considered most opportune for entering into the fray, and Hermione winced as he leaned forward to speak. There was no way this was going to end well.

"No, Thomas, I wasn't. I flatter myself that I am now, however," Draco said crisply. "Didn't you ever do anything foolish when you were young? I seem to recall a bet involving Blaise, a Bludger and Madam Pince-" Suddenly Dean was stuttering incoherently, and Seamus picked up the hatchet instead.

"Are you seriously trying to say that taking the Dark Mark ranks up there with running naked through the library?" he asked angrily, and Luna's laugh rang out over the muffled sniggers and rising hackles, as clear as a bell.

"No," Draco admitted, his thin lips pressed so tightly together that they drew a narrow, bloodless slash across his face. "Only in that they were both mistakes, and hideously stupid in hindsight."

"So marrying Hermione and joining the League is some sort of penance for your sins?" Seamus asked. "Do you really expect us to believe that?"

Something dangerous flashed across Draco's eyes, but to Hermione's relief he remained calm on the surface.

"I don't expect you to believe anything, Finnigan, except the evidence of your own eyes. I signed that charter. I married a Muggle-born. Weasley can attest to that, if you don't believe me. I'm here, plotting against the Ministry who could easily throw me back into Azkaban if they found out."

Hermione thought that Draco possibly should have kept the last comment to himself when she saw the expression on George's face. She recognised it from his last day at Hogwarts. Ill-advised reminders of Draco's precarious position with the Ministry didn't seem to matter to Seamus, however.

"But why?" he pressed, and appeared to be speaking for most of what remained of Dumbledore's Army and the second Order of the Phoenix. From her corner, Tracey Davis was watching both Draco and Seamus with the same slight disdain.

"A wise man once said that the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. Pure-blood supremacy turned out to be a daft idea, so I'm hoping sensible restraint works better," Draco said, still refraining from being deliberately provocative.

"You're saying that democracy is sensible now?" Angelina asked, clearly having a difficult time believing it.

"Compared to the alternative, yes. Don't forget I've seen the reality of it much closer than most of you," Draco reminded her.

"Can we get on with business, if you're quite finished raking up the past?" a reedy voice snapped. "Some of us don't have a century to go over past wrongs, you know." Mrs Longbottom looked distinctly unimpressed with the astonished faces her pronouncement was greeted with. "Did you think no one was ever in a war before you? I had the same argument with that boy's grandfather, and his father too. They both sounded much more contrite than young Draco here, by the way," Ron's grin hardly fit on his face and Hermione groaned inwardly as she mentally calculated how many times he would refer to 'young Draco' before he got bored with it. "For all that, none of them would ever have married a Muggle-born. Perhaps you should consider that this one might actually be honest."

Augusta Longbottom turned her sharp gaze to Seamus, who still was leaning forward as if he was expecting a fight.

"Revolutions are for the young," she pronounced. "Barricades and romanticism! That won't change the world. Take my advice, and try to be wiser than you are. People changing, that'll change the world, eventually. Talking and _listening_ and nudging things along, that's what you need to be doing. Not silly posturing or raking over old wounds."

Seamus' face was red, but he was listening. Even Tracey had let her mask of cool indifference slip slightly.

"I've seen Orders and Leagues come and go, and Dark Lords or whatever they call themselves, too. There's no end to the stupidity of mankind, I can tell you that. At least this time, you'll be starting in the right end. If you can just keep from making a shambles of it and fighting between yourselves, you might actually achieve something."

The set of Ron's shoulders relaxed visibly, and they could finally get on with business. Hermione noticed that Draco still was attracting some dark looks, but then she had hardly expected him to be received with open arms. After all, if things had been different she would probably have led the charge against him herself.

-oOo-

* * *

**All Muggle pubs in this fic exist in real life. The Irish history lesson is also true, including the three-year family estrangement over voting for the wrong party. **

**The Committee to Unelect the Minister for Magic is a reference to Terry Pratchett; I think Hermione would be a fan too.  
**


	17. Chapter 16 - Fly Away From Here

**As usual, I owe MysticDew for being a fantastic beta!  
**

* * *

**Chapter 16**

**Fly Away From Here**

**-oOo-**

**2PM, 6****th**** of May 2006, The Dower House, Malfoy Manor, Wiltshire**

Sunk into a deckchair placed on the terrace at the back of the house, Hermione was surreptitiously admiring the view. It consisted of Draco Malfoy cleaning his broomstick from Hogwarts in his shirtsleeves. The broom was a Nimbus 2003, if she remembered correctly; she had learnt the hard way that it was unwise to ask lest she was regaled with far too much detail. When it came to brooms and Quidditch, Draco wasn't really that different to Ron.

Ostensibly Hermione was reading a book, when not ogling her husband or lazily letting her gaze rest on the budding greenery around her. After a long, cold spring, the leaves had finally sprung out on the ancient trees surrounding the Dower House. The new leaves were so fresh that they were almost transparent and tulips shone in every corner of the garden.

When she was little, Hermione had always loved this time of year. It held all the loveliness of spring with the promise of summer and great things to come. When she became a teenager, looming exams checked her exuberance somewhat; the anniversaries of Battle of Hogwarts had done the rest. Two years ago, she had taken a week's leave and holed herself up in her apartment waiting for the days to pass. She hadn't cried much; mostly she had just been sitting on the couch staring a hole in the wall. Despite the sunshine, Hermione shuddered at the memory.

Last year had been infinitely better. It had been sunny then, too, and Ron had deserted his family to spend the day with Hermione among the spring flowers in the Forest of Dean, talking about Harry and their schooldays. They didn't mention Voldemort or the war, or anything else unpleasant: just everything good and beautiful and bright. Remembering Harry the way he wanted to be, ordinary and happy, had seemed like the best memorial Hermione could imagine. If it hadn't been for that day, she wasn't sure she could have enjoyed the spring flowers around her in the garden only a few days after the anniversary this year.

When the anniversary had rolled around again, less than a week ago, Hermione had convinced Ron that he had better stay with his family in order to prevent the Weasley civil war from escalating any further. In the wake of Hermione's return, the ties between them were stretched so thin that any additional strain might break them. Ginny was teetering precariously on the brink as it was; Ron choosing Hermione over his family again might just push her over it.

Hermione had resigned herself to another solitary vigil, and debated whether she should inform Draco or Narcissa of her intention to spend the next few days in her room or not. She cast a rueful glance at her window upstairs from her seat in the garden, remembering how she had wondered whether she could get away with just not appearing for meals.

In the end, she hadn't been given a choice.

Draco had announced that they were going to the remembrance ceremony at Hogwarts and brokered no opposition. Amplifying his voice so Hermione couldn't get away from him even if she stayed in her room, he badgered her until she got out of bed and got dressed. As soon as she emerged, he grabbed her and Apparated her Side-Along to Hogwarts.

Draco attracted some dark looks, but no one voiced any comments on his presence. He at least shared the distinction of having been there, unlike the sycophants who tried to attach themselves to the Order after the battle had been won.

The hangers-on would probably have been slightly less eager, had they known what the price for heroism was for anyone perceived as a threat to post-war stability. As none of the opportunists were important enough to make any waves in politics, they usually failed to attract the Ministry's attentions and remained happily oblivious to the danger.

Naturally, the Ministry had its own self-declared Order members to keep an eye at the genuine article. Dumbledore had been so secretive about who exactly was a member that no one could disprove their claims. Hermione was able to pick out a few Ministry plants in the crowd; no doubt Draco knew of more. Having fought for the other side didn't seem to hamper him unduly in that regard. The Ministry's main objective had been to reduce the power of the Order of the Phoenix, so the moles had tried to reduce its influence rather than taking it over.

It was no coincidence that this was the first year that the Order of the Phoenix remembrance ceremony had detached itself from the Ministry's. Ron's return had forced the more analytically inclined Weasleys (that would be Percy, Fleur and Ron himself) to reconsider what really happened at the end of the war, and Hermione's acquittal had done the rest. The remains of the Order may be in tatters, but in the end she was one of them. In a rare show of post-war solidarity, a majority of the Order had testily informed the Ministry that they wouldn't be in attendance at the official ceremony.

In the face of that declaration, even those loyal to the Ministry found it best to stay away lest their true allegiance should become a little too obvious. Defiance had its limits, however. Many of the genuine survivors were unaccounted for at the Order remembrance ceremony at Hogwarts, some no doubt finding themselves indisposed in a delicate effort to balance between what was right and what put food on the table.

As could be expected, _The Daily Prophet _had provided limited coverage of the story, but the double ceremonies had been front-page news in _The Quibbler _all week. It was clear that Draco was aware of which of the two he ought to be seen at, and equally clear that he couldn't have turned up on his own.

Hermione couldn't find it in her to care.

It felt right to be there in the bright sunlight, remembering together with the people who had been there too. She didn't even mind if Draco tagged along on her coat tails to improve his position in the wizarding world; who was she to be the arbiter of who was worthy or unworthy to remember the fallen?

For a moment she was even happy to have him there with her. When Ginny demonstrably stopped dead in her tracks and turned away rather than coming face to face with Hermione, she gratefully hung on to Draco's arm. In return, she pretended not to notice that his hands were shaking slightly as they approached Dumbledore's grave.

Never having attended an official remembrance service before, Hermione had been unsure of what to expect. As it turned out, except the solemn recital of the fallen - from both sides, she noted approvingly - and a short speech by Dedalus Diggle, exhorting them to never let it happen again and to stand firm in the battle for what was good and right, there was very little rhetoric. Instead there was music, and silence, and a strange feeling of togetherness among the disparate crowd. Afterwards even Draco looked more at peace than she ever had seen him before.

And now, instead of locking herself away, Hermione was out in the sun. Vaguely, she recalled a long-lost favourite poem, but didn't get further than 'I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers…'. She couldn't remember anything else, except that the poet would 'sing of cleanly wantonness' which always had sounded delicate and delicious to her ears.

Ha! Chance would be a fine thing she thought, while noticing that Draco's face had turned slightly pink from energetically rubbing Fleetwood's High-Finish Handle Polish onto the handle of his broom. It was the most flushed she ever had seen him; normally he seemed to be unaffected by heat, cold and other stimuli ordinary mortals fell victim to.

He appeared to be equally unaffected by their rather peculiar marital arrangements. Surprisingly, Draco had managed to conform to the public image of their happy union quite successfully so far; she tried to avoid pondering what he did in private.

Hermione knew that she always could pop over to the Muggle world for a quick shag with no strings attached, if she fancied it; the very possibility helped her hold on to her sanity. As long as she took some rudimentary precautions it was improbable that Draco would ever find out. She had tried it once or twice, but unsurprisingly she found that she just wasn't the sort of person who went in for illicit thrills. It felt fake, anyway; she had to disguise herself and, as it would be supremely foolish to actually get involved with anyone, there could be no emotional connection.

Regretfully, she had dropped her previous friends with benefits from the very beginning. She didn't know how long Draco had been watching her before making his proposition, but it seemed wise to assume that he would be aware of their existence and Hermione had no desire to provoke him into retaliation. As long as they could handle their sham of a marriage in civilised manner in public, it wasn't really anybody else's business what they did in private.

"Can't believe your luck, Granger, eh?" Draco leered at Hermione over his broom and she blushed like she had been caught flossing her teeth in public.

"I may as well admire your best side," she retorted, gamely gathering her wits. "Most of us aim to be beautiful on the inside, but clearly you've decided to focus your efforts elsewhere." Draco grinned and she caught on, not quite believing she had left herself so open to attack again.

"I'm stunned, Hermione!" He bowed to her theatrically. "So you think I'm beautiful, do you? I would have preferred something more masculine, but I guess it'll do."

"Oh, shut up!" she huffed, but couldn't help smiling. "You know what I mean. Now that you're done polishing your broom-" She tried to quell his merriment at that with a stern look; not everything had to be a bloody innuendo. "It's _your_ broom, for God's sake. If there was anything remotely funny about it I should be laughing, not you."

He immediately turned absolutely serious in half a second, staring at her earnestly without a quiver. Hermione emitted a long-suffering sigh, but forbore from commenting on his theatrics; otherwise they could be there all day.

"I need you to work with me on the Robinson defence," she informed him instead.

"What defence? Is it a new spell?" They'd taken to practising duelling together. It was astonishing how many handy spells you picked up from the witches and wizards around you, rather than in class or from books. Since they came from completely different circles, they had both expanded their arsenals considerably once they got comfortable enough with each other to share their knowledge rather than jealously guarding it.

"Draco, you know who Robinson is - he was here last week!"

He looked alarmed.

"Not the man who came over on Thursday? The drawing room stunk afterwards, took the house-elves all day to air it out!" Hermione knew for a fact that Draco didn't care a toss about the house-elves, but it really had riled him that it had been necessary to take their tea in the library instead. It was the principle of the thing, he had told her self-righteously at the time.

"None of us can help the way we're made," Hermione said primly; having met Mr Robinson before, she had taken precautions before his arrival. Going without her sense of smell for a day and a night had been a small price to pay.

"The rest of us wash, you know. What do you want my help for? Shall I draft a letter telling him how to take a bath, in five easy steps?"

"No!" she said, alarmed; Draco may very well do just that unless she stopped him. Hermione was beginning to learn that being a Malfoy entailed many things, but striving for universal popularity was not one of them. "I need you to help me collect the references for his case. You're actually quicker than me at using _Haistwell's Statutes_," she admitted, having carefully calculated the exact amount of flattery required to make him do what she wanted without making him suspicious.

"Maybe," Draco said noncommittally. Hermione's face fell; it would take all day if she had to do it on her own. "I'll do it, if you come flying with me afterwards," Draco offered unexpectedly.

"What?" she asked in disbelief.

"I agree to spend my afternoon digging through two hundred year old legal references, which for your information are the best proof known to man that boredom can be distilled into solid form, if you get up on a broom when we're done."

"Why would you want to go flying with me?"

"Comedy value. We had flying lessons together in first year, remember? You were clutching your broom so hard I actually thought it would break at one point." Hermione opened her mouth to protest in indignation even though it was all too true, when he continued. "Besides, all Malfoys fly. You'll have to learn to do it properly sooner or later, anyway."

Draco didn't mention that he had seen her fly at the Battle of Hogwarts. If she could handle herself adequately on a broom when there was a Dark Lord to be defeated, he saw no reason why she couldn't repeat the same feat in peacetime.

Hermione considered. Gut-clenching terror, or being stuck with Haistwell all day? Draco hadn't exaggerated; if they weren't so useful, even she would have consigned _Haistwell's Statutes_ to the dustbin of history. Casting a longing eye around her in the garden, taking in the explosion of greenery around her, she rashly made her decision.

"Oh, all right then. But we do the research first-"

"Just as I suggested," Draco pointed out.

"-and go flying later. Remember that Vow you took? It's in your own interest to make sure I don't fall. Or get a heart attack because I'm about to fall. Or-"

"Don't worry, Granger. Don't you remember my Head of House could fly without a broom?"

"Why, did he teach you?" she asked; she knew him too well to make the obvious assumption.

"As it happens he didn't, but I'm-"

"If I fall to my death, I'll be back and haunt you. You'll never sleep again. All you'll see is my battered corpse yelling at you, wherever you go," she promised him darkly, continuing on the theme as they walked to the library.

In between scribbling down references and threatening retribution should Draco fail to ensure that she returned in one piece, Hermione managed to remember something else.

"The Uffington White Horse is near here, isn't it?" she asked.

"It's in Berkshire," Draco replied, from behind his makeshift fortress of reference books. "We could fly there in half an hour, if you wanted to," he said with studied nonchalance.

In the end they were gone so long they ended up being late for dinner, stumbling in with rosy cheeks and hair ruffled from the wind. Hermione made a token effort to look presentable before joining Narcissa, but gave up when she realised that the bird's nest she had ended up with courtesy of the wind refused to budge.

The lure of seeing the graceful idea of a horse etched into the hills themselves by prehistoric wizards hadn't been enough to distract her completely from the sheer terror of being in the air, but towards the end she could almost see what all the fuss was about. Almost.

Nothing could make her reconsider her views on Quidditch, however.

-oOo-

* * *

**The poem Hermione was thinking of in this chapter is 'The Argument of his Book' by Robert Herrick. The Uffington White Horse is a gigantic horse drawn in chalk during the Bronze Age, and it's not very far from Wiltshire and Malfoy Manor. **


	18. Chapter 17 - Missing

**Thanks again to MysticDew for being a great beta!**

* * *

**Chapter 17**

**Missing**

**-oOo-**

**1.30 PM, 15****th**** of November 2006 – The Dower House, Wiltshire**

Hermione didn't appear for lunch.

It wasn't out of the ordinary for her not to be at the Dower House, but usually she would make arrangements with Draco in advance to ensure that Narcissa wouldn't be eating on her own. Today not even the house-elves seemed to know that the young mistress would be away, which also was strange. Hermione may have been compelled to give up legal reform on their behalf, but it was uncharacteristic for her to cause them extra work.

Neither Draco nor Narcissa seemed outwardly perturbed by Hermione's absence, but over lunch they were slightly more curt with each other than was their usual custom. In the afternoon, while having their tea in the drawing room with the violently rococo furniture that had caused Hermione such discomfort at her first visit, Narcissa inspected her nails and asked indifferently:

"I don't suppose Hermione informed you what her plans were for today?"

Draco put his cup and saucer down with a rattle.

"No."

"Will she be back for dinner, do you know?" Narcissa asked, with studied nonchalance.

"I would imagine so."

Nothing more was said, but that evening neither of them was able to give their full attention to their respective occupations. Hermione may be impulsive and headstrong in some way but she was neither prone to chasing sudden whims nor likely to take off without informing someone first, not without a pressing reason.

The most likely explanation for her absence was that something important had occurred unexpectedly. Even if that was the case, it still didn't make sense for her notes to be left in a tidy pile in the library, with her tattered messenger bag still there next to them on the table. Just like at Hogwarts, Hermione seldom went anywhere without her book bag. Draco had definitely seen Hermione setting herself up in the library in the morning; she had been writing her weekly column for _The Quibbler_,and from experience he knew it would take her most of the day.

Hermione Granger-Malfoy was constitutionally incapable of letting the wizarding public get away with being uninformed, which meant that she regularly presented it with actual facts that she had researched meticulously to counter Ministry propaganda or simple old-fashiond lazy reporting. The side effect of being informative was that it tended to cause the victims eyes to glaze over, many of them being more used to reading _Witch Weekly_ or _Which Broomstick_; this meant that Hermione also had to dedicate quite some time to making her column readable.

Draco knew that she tested it on Ronald Weasley in secret when she wasn't certain if she had struck the right level; he was holding that particular snippet of information back as reserve ammunition for the next time Hermione tried to make him spend more time with the Weasleys.

By dinnertime, both Draco and Narcissa were increasingly fidgety and it only took a tentative suggestion from his mother for to make him consider starting to Floo call Hermione's friends. The only thing holding him back was the conundrum of what to tell them. In some ways, it was actually a relief that the Weasel knew the truth about their relationship. It wasn't necessary to keep up appearances with him, but Draco was still loath to ask Weasley of all people if he knew where Hermione was.

When the clock struck ten and Hermione still hadn't turned up, he gave in and Floo'd the Burrow anyway. As Weasley's face appeared in his line of sight, looking confused and still chewing on his dinner, Draco resolved not to make a habit of it.

"I thought the League meeting was next week!" Weasley said indistinctly with his mouth still full. Draco winced; he really couldn't understand what Hermione had seen in him at school.

"It is. That's not why I'm calling." Draco suddenly felt rather self-conscious; both of them knew that Hermione trusted Weasley much further than she would trust Draco, and it was galling to be asking for help. It was too late to cry off now, however.

"Have you seen Hermione today? She went out this morning and didn't leave any word of where she was going off to."

Weasley suddenly looked more alert, and mercifully he finally swallowed the last mouthful.

"No, and I haven't heard from her either." Looking behind him, he said something Draco didn't catch.

"Hold on, I'm coming through." Draco barely had time to pull his own head out of the fireplace before Weasley's head appeared at the Dowager House, attached to his rather large body. Once all his limbs were on Malfoy territory he straightened himself up again.

"Mum," Weasley said by way of explanation, before carrying on where he had left off. "There's nothing going on that'd make Hermione take off without telling anyone. Not that I know of. Even if there was, she'd definitely let at least one of us know."

Draco concurred, but didn't waste his breath saying so. He was quite relieved to have Weasley there to take over the Floo calling; most of the people Hermione could conceivably be with were decidedly more likely to give up the desired information to Weasley than to Draco.

Weasley unapologetically disturbed dinners and raised people from their beds (Draco couldn't quite get over the fact that Percy Weasley went to bed in a night cap at the tender age of thirty), but couldn't rustle up anyone who had laid eyes on Hermione that day.

"Right," he announced, after an irate Seamus Finnigan had assured him that he hadn't seen Hermione for the last fortnight, and that he was after letting Ginny wait for him for twenty minutes – surely Ron realized what was expecting him now? Weasley simply advised him not to try and dodge her hexes since that only made her angrier, and pulled his head of the fireplace.

"Did you do anything that would make Hermione throw a fit and take off?" he asked evenly. Draco considered hexing him for his impertinence, before remembering that they were adults now and it hardly would be helpful, no matter how satisfying it may be to make Weasley spew slugs a second time.

"No. Do you really think I would have called _you_, of all people, if that was the case?" he snapped.

Draco would never admit it to Weasley, but he had been racking his brains all day for what he could have done.

As much as he disliked acknowledging it, he knew that if Hermione had stormed off in a fury it was most likely that she would have gone to Weasley. There really wasn't any way she could have discovered anything to give her cause to do so, unless Draco had been extremely unlucky. Or careless, he thought, remembering the Pensieve memories she had stumbled across. He was certain he had hidden everything Hermione shouldn't see, well enough to fool a goblin on the trail for treasure. Almost certain.

"OK." Ron cast a shrewd glance at Draco, who suddenly was grateful that Weasley was about as likely to have mastered Legilimency as Severus Snape was to have bequeathed his prized collection of rare potions ingredients to Harry Potter. "If you're sure-" he asked again.

"Yes," Draco irritably assured him.

"Then I guess we'll have to wait," Ron concluded. Draco's chin dropped in surprise at the suggestion.

"What do you mean, wait?" he asked.

"We've checked with everyone we can think of, you've checked all the places she could be. She might just be in a library somewhere, losing track of time," Weasley pointed out.

"It's eleven thirty at night, no library in the northern hemisphere would be open at this hour!" Draco snapped in return.

Weasley had the gall to smirk when he asked: "You really think Hermione follows the rules _all_ the time?"

"Regardless, she's unlikely to have broken into a library somewhere and got sufficiently lost in research to have caused the house-elves to prepare two wasted meals for her," Draco observed, irately rubbing his face with the back of his palm.

Ron sent him an appreciative glance that he missed.

"True. She might have gone to- to check up on her parents, though."

Draco had no response to that, not being privy to any details about what exactly had happened to Hermione's parents after she had hid their memories. After an uncomfortable silence, it was agreed that Ron would come back in the morning if there were no news during the night. After dispatching Weasley back to his interrupted dinner, Draco went to relay their lack of success to his mother.

* * *

A late dawn delivered an unshaven Ronald Weasley, who didn't look as if he had slept much. He still seemed to be a lot more chipper than Draco felt.

Malfoys didn't betray that they were feeling as rough as a badger's arse, even if their spouses had gone missing. If there had been any spectators present who knew the full story (like Weasley, for example), they may have pointed out that there generally was more affection between husband and wife than the grudging understanding that eventually had developed between Draco and Hermione.

Draco knew his family history, though, and the relationship between Hermione and himself was positively rosy compared to some of the uneasy alliances his forbearers had entered into. However, Malfoy protocol was quite clear: showing any sign of distress was bad form, and Draco regally swept into the hall to a waiting Weasley with no other visible sign of concern than a stubborn twitch under his eye. It wouldn't go away, no matter how much he poked his wand at it.

"Still not back?" Ron asked, for form's sake.

"No."

"I caught a few more people this morning, but no one has seen her. Luna says hello, and to put a branch of mistletoe over Hermione's bed. Apparently the Snorgles or something will bring her back in no time."

They both snorted.

"What do you suggest we do now?" Draco asked, not quite sure why he was turning to Weasley for advice.

"Now, we think."

Ron marched into the library and plonked himself down at the table, leafing through Hermione's abandoned notes as Draco followed him and sat down opposite. He was just about to goad Weasley about his lack of action when he started talking again.

"Provided that you're telling the truth and Hermione hasn't discovered something you thought she wouldn't be able to find out about-" Draco looked affronted, but Weasley merely smiled and continued. "Whatever it is, she'll find out eventually. Trust me. Anyway, assuming that's not it something else must've happened," Ron patiently set out.

"Hermione wouldn't stay away this long without telling anyone, unless she's either stormed off in a snit," he stretched out his thumb, "-or rediscovered the Ancient Library of Alexandria and is still lost in the scrolls," he added his index finger, "- or has been snatched by someone who won't let her go." He let his middle finger represent the third option.

None of them voiced the fourth alternative, but it hung there in the air.

In the pale daylight, Draco agreed with Weasley's general argument: there was simply no way of knowing for sure. For several reasons, he was very much hoping the answer to the riddle wasn't the third alternative. He knew for sure that Hermione wasn't dead but admitting to it would land him in trouble, so for the moment he decided not to share this piece of information with Weasley.

Draco suppressed a sharp twinge of what he suspected was his conscience reminding him of its existence.

Unbidden, a memory fragment rose to the surface; Hermione, thrashing in pain on the Aubusson carpet in Malfoy Manor. Being alive didn't seemed like much of an advantage when someone like Aunt Bella turned her wand on you.

"But do you think it's serious?" Draco asked. His stomach was acting funny; it seemed to be full of ice all of a sudden.

"I don't know, same as you. There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation. Owls can get lost, you know." Weasley seemed to be bearing up a lot better than one would have expected; Draco wondered if that was the way you turned out when you had fought on the winning side of a war. Or maybe all Gryffindors were inoculated with mindless optimism immediately after the Sorting.

"What do we do now, then?" he asked, almost petulantly.

"We wait," Weasley said, parking his size eleven dragon hide boots on the mahogany table, purely to irritate Draco, and picking up Hermione's notes again. "Here, d'you know she's looking into Dark wizards being involved in the poisoning of Litvinenko?"

"Wasn't that supposed to be due to radioactivity?" Draco asked, willing to go to the extreme of admitting that he had been reading Muggle newspapers to a Weasley in order to have something to distract himself with.

They passed the day in desultory conversation, Ron Apparating home to the Burrow for lunch before coming back with gingersnap crumbs falling off his robes, still munching audibly. Draco endured more small talk with his mother, who surprisingly had appeared for lunch despite looking pale and drawn. Without really touching on the subject, somehow she ascertained that there was no news and that Weasley was coming back to keep their useless vigil before retiring upstairs again.

Owls arrived through the day, bearing letters from friends requesting news about Hermione, or on more mundane errands such as delivering _The_ _Daily Prophet_. Nothing of interest appeared in it, which was mildly interesting in itself. Considering the amount of people they had contacted to ask about Hermione's whereabouts, Draco had expected at least one of them to tip off the press. Perhaps the editor was holding it back it for an extra evening issue; editors have to make a living, too.

Night had fallen by the time an unknown, solid-looking tawny owl pecked on the window. Weasley was playing solitaire with an abandoned deck of Muggle playing cards he had produced from the pockets of his robe, and Draco was unsuccessfully trying to do his accounts. Nothing wanted to balance anyway, so he got up to let the owl in. When he didn't recognize it he was instantly suspicious and alerted Weasley by kicking the leg of his chair. He jerked to attention as Draco let the owl in.

Wands raised, they watched the owl landing on Hermione's notes; both winced as its claws caused even more destruction than their futile attempts to identify any particular line of inquiry that would have sent her out on an information retrieval mission had. She would have someone's head for that.

"It's got a box around its neck!" Ron exclaimed.

"You don't say, Weasley."

Gingerly Draco detached the box, which immediately expanded to a cube a few inches wide. He rapidly pulled his hands away and frowned. Some quick charms revealed that there most certainly was more to it than an ordinary box. Weasley tried a few of his own charms on the owl, but none of his efforts of tracking its provenance worked. He set it aside for a bad job and cleared his throat, which distracted Draco enough to pull his gaze away from the mysterious box.

"Yes?" he asked irritably.

"This is where we decide whether to call in the Aurors," Weasley said, managing to sound as if he were discussing Puddlemere United's chances in the league this year.

"No!" Draco almost exploded. "We won't involve any bloody Aurors in this, I- I forbid it!"

"They'd be able to detect information we haven't a hope of getting from that box," Weasley answered in a deceptively mild voice.

"They might, if this whole debacle wasn't being orchestrated by their employer," Draco retorted. "In all likelihood," he added reluctantly.

"You'll also be first in line as a suspect, if they do find out that Hermione's missing and you haven't reported it," Weasley pointed out with uncanny accuracy.

"You know as well as I do that this has the Ministry's fingerprints all over it. They'd probably arrest me and rejoice when they find her dead somewhere, unquestionably killed by her former Death Eater husband."

"But they're more likely to do that if you keep it quiet. At least if you come to them, it won't look as suspicious. I could probably give you an alibi, too."

"I _know,_" Draco snarled. "Believe it or not, I do have more intelligence than the common gnat. I also know I've no chance of finding her that way. At least I can do something if I'm not stuck in a cell in Azkaban."

"All right. What about the League?" Weasley suggested, and Draco briefly considered it. He was actually tempted; he might be loath to admit it openly, but some of its members, including the Weasleys, were very handy with a wand. Others, like Theo and Luna Lovegood, also had sufficiently devious minds to rival even his own when it came to outwitting their opponents. Was he really picking going into this with only Weasley on his side, over them?

Yes, Draco decided with an irritated shrug. More people meant losing more time on explanations and discussions; they could always call them in later.

"No League," Draco said firmly. To his own surprise, he added: "It'd take too long. Later, maybe," to explain what he was thinking. Weasley merely nodded, and both of them turned their eyes back on the enigmatic box. A muttered spell, and the cardboard box, wrapping a device made of what appeared to be shiny chrome, fell on the table. What was left was very Muggle-looking, Draco thought in a corner of his mind as he cast more charms. It was easier now that he could see it properly.

"Do you know what it is?" Weasley asked, proving that he hadn't yet grown out of asking stupid questions.

"Do I look like someone who knows what this contraption is?" Draco muttered, not bothering to raise his voice. Ron contended himself with watching, until Draco's efforts eventually were crowned with purple smoke lazily waving through the air above the box, and he finally knew how to get to the next layer of the riddle.

"I am Draco Malfoy, husband of Hermione Ma- Granger-Malfoy," he stated and stood back. The chrome box was revealed to be another layer of packaging: it cracked in a jagged line, opening diagonally across the smooth surface, and the two sides fell apart. Between them laid an egg-shaped device with a surface that seemed to be shifting constantly, whirling in and out of focus as they were watching it.

"I know what it is," Weasley contributed unexpectedly. With raised eyebrows, Draco waited for him to enlighten him further. The moment when he would have to reveal exactly what he did before Hermione regained her magic was rapidly approaching, and he wasn't eager to discussing that particular night's work with Weasley.

"I've seen George experimenting with these before. They're called Seers' Eyeballs," they both pulled back minutely from the table at the gruesome image evoked by the name, "and they carry a message. If it's meant for you, it'll give you the message when you touch it. Don't!" Draco pulled his hand back; it had hovered just an inch from the device. "It'll also let the sender know you've received it, and what your immediate future is." Draco backed off as if he had been burnt.

"I can't touch it!" he said, sounding ever so slightly panicky.

"Why?" Weasley asked, sounding so reasonable that it set Draco's teeth on edge.

"Explaining the reasons to you now would forfeit the purpose. Just rest assured that I can't. What happens if someone else touches the- the Eyeball?" Draco asked.

"I'm not volunteering, anyway. It depends on who the sender is, but it can be pretty bad." They looked at the device again, not needing to discuss the identity of the organisation it ultimately emanated from. At the moment it looked like a stormy sky, with clouds flitting across its surface quicker than they could follow.

Finally, Draco sighed and ordered some tea from the house-elves to make the proceedings somewhat smoother. Weasley must have sensed that a decision had been made, but said nothing until Miffy had left them with a mountain of sandwiches and a pot of tea.

"You'd better tell me what has you so worked up that you're casting an Impervious to protect yourself from flying teacups," Weasley eventually observed, and then there was nothing else for it but to start talking.

"I know how to find Hermione-" Draco started, and Weasley lit up immediately.

"Well, let's go and get her then!" he cut in, apparently oblivious to the fact that Draco surely would have done so already if it wasn't more complicated than that.

"Weasley, I'll need you to listen to me for the next few minutes and not argue. There'll be plenty of time for that when this is over, I promise."

"All right," Weasley warily agreed, suddenly sporting a suspicious look in his eyes.

"I mean it. We've no time for fits of temper – if you can't promise to keep it in check, you might as well go home now."

"I'm staying. Get on with it."

Draco fervently hoped the somewhat feeble assurances were sufficient and launched into his tale.

"Anticipating that a situation like this would arise some day, I took the precaution of raising blood wards connecting me to Hermione. I can locate her as long as she's in Britain-"

"Blood wards! I can't believe she agreed to tha- Wait a second, does Hermione know about this?"

"No," Draco admitted, swallowing nervously despite his will. If she survived her current predicament, Hermione certainly would find out now.

"You- you sick fuck! You absolute _wanker_! Do you have any idea-"

"Ah-" Draco raised his finger, and Weasley managed to swallow his words, although his face was taking on a sickly puce colour.

"So you can find out where she is, right now," he managed between clenched teeth.

"Yes. But I'd rather not do the spells here, since the Ministry come to check on my mother every month."

"You certainly wouldn't want them to find evidence of you practicing the Dark Arts now, would you?" Weasley asked nastily.

"No. Can you suggest anywhere we could go instead?"

Draco actually thought Weasley would refuse on principle, but he relented eventually.

"Mum's at Bill and Fleur's today, minding the kids. We can use the broom shed at the Burrow," he finally said in a subdued voice, although it clearly pained him to make the concession.

* * *

Weasley had called in Charlie, Fleur, Angelina and Bill Weasley and Theo Nott to act as backup if needed; they hadn't been told anything except that Hermione was missing, presumably kidnapped, and that their help may be required to liberate her.

The two of them managed to fend off further questions and withdrew to the ancient broom shed that housed two decades of cast-off Quidditch supplies. It stank and was full of spiders, which scattered as they entered. Draco produced Hermione's hairbrush, which still had several curly hairs caught in it, and proceeded to set up the magical circle he would need for the next step.

Blood magic relied on old-fashioned, grisly components like blood and spit and hair disdained by modern wizards, who preferred not to get their hands dirty. It was passed down through generations of pure-blood families, but rarely spoken about. Hermione would almost certainly be familiar with the principles, especially given the significance blood magic had held for Potter, but as a Muggle-born she was unlikely to ever have practiced it. Ron knew the basics, but had never been particularly interested in using it. While Draco was busy drawing lines on the unswept floor, he gave air to his grievances instead.

"You're a pretty poor husband, you know. You'll be lucky if she even speaks to you when- after all this."

"Is that so?" Draco muttered, clearing away some cobwebs and not really listening. At least Weasley wasn't getting in his way.

"You're not good enough for her. She deserves someone a lot better than you!"

"Right."

"At least I love her – can you say the same?" His incessant bleating was getting seriously bloody annoying now, and Draco didn't answer. "She should have been married to me, and you know it!"

Weasley just would not let go, and Draco finally had enough.

"She would never have married you anyway, Weasley, so forget about it," he answered testily, hunched over the precious brown hairs with his wand, working furiously. Ron could hear him clearly all the same.

"Because you got to her first!" he retorted furiously. "If I hadn't been in St. Mungo's when you made that deal with her I would have given you a run for your money, believe me!"

Draco sighed loudly for the benefit of his dimwitted companion, since his exasperated expression was hidden under his hair.

"Even if I hadn't, she would never have taken such a risk with you." He swore under his breach as another attempt to line up the hairs failed, trying another charm instead.

"She didn't mind marrying me too much, because she doesn't care what happens to me." Draco cursed himself for feeling bereft at putting into words how little he meant to Hermione. What did he care, anyway? "But you're one of very few people she's got left. Remember what happened to the others? Think about it." He couldn't see his face, but he would have bet on Weasley looked even more clueless than usual. Draco ticked them off for him instead.

"Potter, who she killed with her own hands. Her parents don't remember her, because she Obliviated them and sent them away to Australia. Yes, I know which continent she sent them to, don't sound so surprised. McGonagall is gone as well, probably partly because she would have kicked up a fuss about her Golden Girl being treated as a murderer." He decided to leave Weasley's father out of it. People could be… sensitive about their fathers. "She probably thinks it's a bloody death sentence to get too close to her. Why else do you think she lived as a Muggle for seven years but hardly made any friends?"

Ron was gob-smacked; he never thought Malfoy would have figured out so much about Hermione. His analysis was eerily similar to what Hermione herself had told him more than a year ago, and Ron had to admit that it sounded entirely plausible.

"I'm just going to say one more thing to you, and then I'll let Hermione do the rest. If we can get her out of this she'll tear you to shreds, make no mistake about that," Ron said as Draco was finishing off his handiwork. Using his own hair, he had fashioned a very thin rope, which he now was shaping into a circle on the floor. The light strands of his hair shone against the dirt, and for once he was regretting not keeping it long in the manner of his father. Draco acknowledged Ron with a quick glance, to show that he was listening. Soon he would be done and the time for talking would be over, but for the moment he would indulge Weasley. It would take longer not too, was one thing.

"She'll be fair to you, no matter what you do to her. That's just the way she is. There's no way she'd ever do anything like casting _blood wards_ on you behind your back." The distaste was clear in Ron's voice. "So for once in your life, Malfoy, try to show that you deserve everything you've been given. The least you can do is to make Hermione happy. She doesn't have many people in the world," he stopped for a breath, "and unfortunately you'll still be married to her after she finds out about this."

Draco finished his magical circle and ignored the tirade. He couldn't quite work out what he should say in response, and in either case it hardly mattered right now. Had he been a bit more observant, he would have seen that Weasley sent him a knowing glance when he opted not to answer.

"It's finished," he said tersely. "I can find her now. Will you get the others?" Ron quickly slipped out to summon the five anxious rescuers concealed in one of the bedrooms, in case his mum would pop home unexpectedly to get something or other she had forgotten to pack in her basket that morning.

Meanwhile, Draco briefly closed his eyes before letting one of Hermione's hairs fall within the magical circle he painstakingly had constructed out of his own hairs and reinforced with a few drops of blood.

"Animum mea reperio," he chanted three times, and then switched to "Uxorem mea reperio," and finally to "Amorem meus reperio". Finally, he drew a deep breath and stepped into the circle.

Had anyone other than the spiders been there to observe him they would have lost sight of him for a moment, as the circle appeared to become a solid cylinder with walls of white, crackling light that etched sharp shadows on the walls of the shed. Quickly the light flickered and died, and Draco stepped out of the circle, which now only consisted of a few burnt hairs lending a new dimension to the broom shed smell. As if on cue, Weasley and his merry gang appeared and Draco beckoned to them to come in; the last thing they needed right now was an inquisitive Molly Weasley on their case.

"I can Apparate to where she is; I suggest me and Wea-" Belatedly, he realized there was a majority of Weasleys in the group. "_Ronald_ and I go first, and in case we need help one of us will Apparate back." Thanks to his little arcane ritual Draco knew where he needed to Apparate to, but not what was expecting them there. It would be foolish to bring more people along when they may just be able to go in, grab Hermione and come back.

"Right," Ron said, grabbing his wand out of the back pocket of his jeans where he had shoved it earlier, and stepped forward to stand next to Draco. "See you in a bit," he said to his comrades in arms. Reluctantly Draco shuffled closer, draping his arm around Weasley's waist, and Apparated them both to Hermione.

At least, that was what he was hoping he was doing.


	19. Chapter 18 - An Ending

**Thanks again to MysticDew for her amazing beta work!**

**Warning: there is some bad language in this chapter. **

* * *

**Chapter 18**

**An Ending**

**-oOo-**

* * *

**10.06 AM, 15****th**** of November 2006 - Unnamed lane opposite the Post Office, Hogsmeade, Scotland**

It was a miserable day. Hermione was shivering and well on the way to being extremely peeved. She hadn't been planning to leave the house at all today, but Charlie had owled her earlier saying that he was in the country and unexpectedly free for the morning - would she meet him at ten outside Madam Puddifoot's in Hogsmeade to have some tea and catch up?

She had been looking forward to seeing him, but it was now five past ten and there was still no sign of Charlie. Cursing her tendency to be fifteen minutes early for everything even when Apparating, Hermione glanced down the empty laneway to the high street for the fifth time in as many minutes. It was a wet and windy Wednesday morning and Hogsmeade was deserted, except for the odd huddled shape hurrying down the main road.

As usual, she had forgotten to cast a Warming Charm before leaving the house. Try as she might, Hermione still hadn't been able to improve the charm so it could warm you up when you were already cold. She was blowing on her fingers in a doomed attempt to warm them up and swearing over Charlie's characteristically slapdash approach to timekeeping when she finally saw him approaching.

"Charlie! It's bloody freezing here!" she said accusingly, before noticing that there was something off about the way he was swinging his arms and the angle he held his head. Not wasting a moment she shook her wand out of her sleeve, but before she could retrieve it she was knocked out from behind.

"Quick! We've got get out of here before anyone sees us!" her attacker admonished his companion, and the two men Disapparated, carrying Hermione with them. "And don't let her get near a wand again, she's pretty quick on the draw."

* * *

Hermione awoke to a pounding head and her tongue being glued to the bridge of her mouth. She was feeling like she had been hit by a falling Hippogriff. The dim light in- well, wherever she was - was easy on her sore eyes, but it didn't help her to make any sense of her surroundings.

Hesitatingly she listened for movement or voices, but was unable to detect anything other than her own breathing. As she cautiously sat up, a blazing pain hit her in the forehead and she winced before continuing the inspection of her surroundings.

They bore a striking resemblance to an old broom shed, although it was conspicuously clean of the usual jumble of unmatched wellies or stray cleaning supplies. There was plenty of dust, however. For form's sake she tried the door, but it was predictably locked. Hermione considered shouting but decided to save it for later. Fumbling her way towards the very back of the space, she patted her pockets and established that everything was gone - even the emergency Portkey she had shrunk and concealed as a button on her boot.

Sitting down with her back to the wall and facing the door, she considered her position.

Obviously, someone had disguised themselves as Charlie Weasley - probably using Polyjuice -and lured her to meet him (or her) in Hogsmeade. Hermione had intended to return to the Dower House for lunch, so she hadn't told anyone where she was going; she had sent an owl back to Charlie to confirm that she would turn up, but it would take at least a week for the owl to make its way to him if he was still in Sweden. Due to the bad weather, she was unlikely to have been spotted by anyone in Hogsmeade.

On the bright side, she was still alive; it indicated that this was more complicated than a straightforward assassination attempt. The most probable culprit was the Ministry; it was possible that some lunatic wanted to avenge Harry's death or that a renegade Death Eater had resurfaced to take revenge on her, but it was extremely unlikely. Therefore she would assume the Ministry was behind this, one way or the other.

These days, Hermione definitely wielded sufficient influence to be a thorn in their side; obvious efforts to smear her had proved to be inadequate, and she had been very careful not to hand her enemies anything substantial to discredit her with. If the League could find as much as a shred of evidence tracing this back to the Ministry, _The Quibbler_ would be having a field day. If you considered the potential fallout abducting her hardly seemed worth the effort, especially when it would be much less complicated to summarily bump her off .

There had to be more to this, Hermione thought, and then it suddenly came to her.

The most likely suspect in a murder cases was the husband (or, much more rarely, the wife). She would bet the entire contents of the Malfoy vault at Gringotts that the plan was to frame Draco for her murder - that must be why she had been stowed away for the moment. It wouldn't do for Hermione to die before Draco could be lured to wherever her body would be found; a whole battalion of Aurors would probably appear as soon as he arrived.

It was likely to work, too; being caught in flagrante would ensure that any doubt surrounding his guilt quickly would be swept under the carpet and Draco would be dispatched to Azkaban to join his father. Neat and efficient, just the way the Ministry liked it.

For a second, Hermione felt horrified admiration for the ingenuity of the plan, before she got angry. Then, because she was no fool, she was afraid.

A more thorough inspection of the space for her incarceration revealed absolutely no useful tools for overpowering her captors whatsoever, by which she deduced that the Ministry unfortunately hadn't hired simpletons to carry out their bidding. Hermione had mastered some rudimentary Muggle self-defense techniques (five years ago, Bermondsey Street had been less gentrified than the current profusion of gastro pubs would suggest), but she would need to get close enough to a wizard to employ them without being neutralized with a wand. Regrettably, that was rather unlikely to happen.

There was still wandless magic, of course; unfortunately, Hermione was still catching up from almost seven years of doing no magic at all and she didn't have that many useful spells to call upon without a wand. She did her best with Alohomora, but the door had been carefully warded. Her Reducto only managed to set splinters of wood flying from the walls, signally failing to blast any holes through which she could escape.

Bollocks.

She tried to push the panic aside for a moment and think beyond the confines of her current situation. Most likely she would be killed as soon Draco could be lured to a suitable location, so her only hope was that he would realize that something was amiss. She still didn't trust him completely; would he really try to find her?

Probably, she decided; Hermione just couldn't bring herself to believe that he would wash his hands of her completely. However, unlike the classic Gryffindor approach to those things, he would probably stop to think first. Draco would be just as capable to form an assumption about the circumstances as Hermione was, and it was possible that he would deduce he was being set up. What then?

She doubted very much they would let her go if he refused to come out to play; most probably, they would still attempt to frame Draco somehow. Which meant that Hermione would be dead in either case.

The hopelessness of her position struck her then, and she was surprised by the strength of her determination to live through this. It would be an ignominy to have survived Voldemort and losing everyone she had ever loved, only to fall to these petty, small-minded, two-bit bureaucrats. She refused to stand for it. Not to speak of what they would do to Draco; no one deserved to be sent to Azkaban if they were innocent, and she refused to be the instrument of his misfortune.

All she had to do was figure out how to stop it from happening.

* * *

The sound of voices outside her makeshift cell took Hermione by surprise, but she managed to hold her artful position on the dirt-ridden floor. Blood had been liberally applied across her face and robes to the highest possible dramatic effect; her half-baked plan entailed luring her captors close enough to check on her that she'd be able to use her rusty self-defense techniques on them, even (ideally) wrestling their wands from them. As the moment of truth drew closer she felt utterly foolish; did she really think this would work when anyone with half a brain would spot her ruse from twenty paces? No matter: it was too late to change her mind now anyway.

"Eyes, mouth, groin," she repeated to herself, fervently hoping her captor would be male; bringing down a bloke seemed slightly more feasible than overpowering a witch.

The door handle rattled and all too soon the door swung open. Hermione resolutely held herself still as she heard footsteps approaching; she could feel the floorboards vibrating against her cheek. Suddenly, she was lifted off the floor and slammed into the wall with sufficient force to make her bounce when she landed the floor again.

"That'll teach you not to play games with me," someone with bad breath growled into her ear, and she lost track of time for a little while.

As she came back to herself again, she noticed that her left arm was terribly sore; it was a dull, persistent ache that seemed to permeate her whole body, even drowning out the hotter soreness of her left knee.

Well, that had gone down like a lead balloon.

Hermione wasn't sure what to do now; her head was a bit light and she was quite certain it shouldn't feel like that. Surely she was meant to be a bit more concerned that she was going to be murdered and Draco would get the blame for it? All she was able to feel at the moment was an overwhelming sadness that it would end this way.

Maybe the two of them weren't the best people she could think of, but they were capable of so much more than this; pawns sacrificed to a pedestrian power-crazed clique at the Ministry. A spark of her true self managed to surface above the sadness. If these were the last precious minutes she was allotted, Hermione wouldn't waste them on bemoaning the corruption of the Ministry.

Instead, she summoned her dearest memories; long-buried moments of holiday ice-creams as she was a awkward ten-year old who knew nothing of magic. Her father, showing her the paste he used to take impressions of his patients' gums, and the teddy bears they built out of it.

Long summer days at the Burrow with the Weasleys and Harry before they were changed by war and grief and death. Her mother laughing in the kitchen as Hermione vehemently denied that she had a crush on Ron. The look on Harry's face as he realized that Ron and Hermione intended to come with him hunting Horcruxes, no matter what. Ron and Charlie at the Marigold, waving at her as she came in the door.

Inexplicably, the image of Draco rendered helpless by laughter as she primly explained her scheme to bring the Ministry down by cursing its internal memos to transform themselves into bats had inserted itself with the others. The smell of books, wonderful ancient books in the Hogwarts library. Neville working the soil of Hogwarts, happy and strong and whole despite everything...

* * *

Draco and Ron Apparated into a dusty hallway, wands at the ready.

"Where is she?" Ron muttered under his breath to Draco, who let the knowledge flow through his fingertips and fill him up before he answered.

"In there," he indicated the unremarkable door on their right, the energy of heavy warding radiating from it. Had he not retained a lingering trace of the primitive power of the blood magic he just performed, he would never have abandoned all caution to blast down the door the way he did. The pull of the blood guided his actions, making him focus on the weak points as he threw a Reducto on the door.

"Blimey," Weasley said weakly as they stepped through the newly opened hole in the wall into the dimly lit room. Then they both spotted Hermione, bloody and unmoving on the floor, and talking turned strictly utilitarian.

"Watch the door," Draco commanded, and Ron obeyed, acutely aware of his poor command of healing charms. It had always been Hermione who-

Meanwhile, Draco had established that she still was breathing, to his very great relief, and that she didn't seem to have any wounds requiring his immediate attention.

"Let's get out of here," he commanded. "She'll live, but I have to get someone more qualified to check her over-"

"Wait!" Ron said, immensely relieved. Impulsively he did something that subsequently would save them a lot of grief, while earning him a thorough bollocking from the rest of the League."Accio Hermione's wand!" he shouted. It sailed into his hand as someone gave up a roar a few floors down. They looked at each other and Disapparated, Draco carrying Hermione with him.

Ron arrived back alone in the broom shed at the Burrow, among a cacophony of raised voices. Someone must have cast an Enlargement charm, or they would never have been able to squeeze all of them inside the shed at the same time.

"-don't care what you-"

"That's all I'm saying!"

"What can they do, _compel_-"

"-last thing we need now-"

Everyone stopped talking for a second, and then broke out again:

"Will she be OK?"

"Ron, Apparate us back and we'll-"

"Where the hell is Hermione?"

"Did you recognize anyone?"

"SHUT UP!" Ron screamed at the top of his voice, and the clamouring of voices ceased abruptly. He looked around for Malfoy and Hermione, but couldn't see them anywhere.

"Hermione'll be fine, Malfoy must have taken her straight to their house."

Anticipating Charlie's question, he continued: "There's no point going back, they knew something happened so whoever it was will have cleared out by now. Or they'll have an ambush ready."

"Probably wouldn't be able to trace them back to the Ministry, in any case," Nott added, to dispel any illusions held by the dim-witted that they could tie the Ministry to the incident.

"Right, I'm going to go to Malfoy's now, so-" Ron said, and Apparated without looking behind him.

In comparison, the Dowager House was quiet and warm; it became a little less silent as Ron started shouting, followed by him thundering up the stairs when Malfoy answered his hollering with a curt "Up here!"

Ron had never been upstairs before; all he had time to notice was the layout was similar to the hall downstairs, before he spotted movement through an open doorway and barged in. The sight of Narcissa Malfoy clad only in a dressing gown and pointing her wand at Hermione brought him up short; this was not what he had been expecting at all.

Draco was leaning over Hermione using a sponge to gently clean most of the blood from her face, revealing unbroken skin beneath.

"The blood seems to come from self-inflicted wounds on her knees, as far as I can tell. The diagnostic charms show that she hasn't been bleeding anywhere else," Narcissa calmly explained to Ron, betraying no surprise at his sudden appearance. "Her arm is broken, and her leg too. She may need to go to St. Mungo's," she said reluctantly, "especially since I can't get a reading on her head injury." She gently prodded the side of Hermione's head and frowned.

Suddenly all the implications of the situation caught up with Ron, and he finally started thinking.

"But we can't take her to St. Mungo's now, can we?" he asked slowly. Hermione entering the hospital beaten up and unconscious would almost be as damaging to Malfoy as if she was found dead, and Ron knew from his own experience that the Ministry's tentacles extended to the would-be independent hospital – Hermione wouldn't necessarily be any better off there.

"We have to take her, we'll just have to figure out a story!" Draco interjected, and Ron realized he had walked straight into an argument.

"You know we can't, not unless it really is about life or death. Hermione would say the same if she was awake," he said.

"It's a head injury, Weasley; h-e-a-d. I admit it might not be of any greater concern in your own case, but Hermione-"

Belatedly, Ron recalled the existence of their backup force – where were they?

"Do you have Anti-Apparition wards up?" he asked, and Malfoy looked irritated at the interruption.

"Of course we do, do you think we want to have every Tom, Dick or Harry calling around at their leisure?"

"Floo!" Ron shouted as he departed the room, and mother and son briefly looked at each other in exasperation before returning to Hermione. In a minute, however, they could hear two sets of footsteps taking the stairs two at a time, heavy boots making the steps rattle all the way up. Ron and Charlie Weasley appeared at the door.

"Charlie's really good with healing charms," Ron panted.

"May I have a look? I work with dragons and we get quite used to patching each other up," Charlie politely explained to Mrs Malfoy, who moved out of his way with some hesitation. Meanwhile, Ron and Draco were conferring furiously in the corner furthest from the bed.

"We need to bring her in to St. Mungo's, so why don't you try to come up with a decent cover story instead of dragging your thick lump of a brother here?" Draco hissed.

"What does it matter, unless she's in on it it'd be useless anyway," Ron whispered back.

"She's clever enough not to mouth off unless she knows what the lay of the land is-"

"I'm telling you, Hermione wouldn't like it."

"What would I not like, Ron?" a faint voice asked from the direction of the bed. Ron's smile seemed to cover his whole face as he ambled over, the tension almost gone from his large frame.

"Going to St. Mungo's-"

"No, absolutely not!"

"See, Malfoy?"

"Unless I'm in a really bad way – what's the verdict, Charlie?" They all turned to the second Weasley present, except Narcissa who had sat down, suddenly faint after all the excitement.

"You'll live," was the laconic answer. "Bit of a sore head, but I've healed the broken bones." Charlie expanded a bit. "You were lucky to land yourself with the type of injuries me and my fearless brethren endure in the name of dragon lore almost every month."

"I was," Hermione smiled, "Thank you."

"Thank Mrs Malfoy too, she'd got off to a good start when I showed up."

"Thank you, Narcissa – Draco, would you?" Hermione cast an anxious glance on her husband, who rushed to his mother's side to prevent her from toppling over.

After a few minutes, order had been restored; Bill, Fleur, Angelina and Theo had been informed that Hermione would be back to full health after a good night's sleep, and were now busy contacting other League members for an emergency meeting.

This was an escalation, and they had to decide how to respond to the Ministry's new measures while making sure they weren't leaving themselves vulnerable to attack. Draco had ensured that his mother was being looked after by the house-elves before rejoining Hermione and Ron. He found her extracting a Pensieve memory; once Draco had bottled it (Weasley with his two left feet were clearly unsuitable for the job), Hermione drank the modified sleeping draught Charlie had retrieved from his lodgings in Sweden through a torturous rake of Floo calls through Northern Europe, and dozed off.

Draco decided that the blame for not telling Hermione that a League meeting would be taking place while she was asleep would be squarely placed on Weasley's shoulders. He was steadfastly ignoring the rather more serious issue he himself would have to assume responsibility for, as soon as she woke up and asked how they had managed to find her.

Draco and Ron jointly dived into the Pensieve in the study; predictably, there was very little useful information in it. When Hermione hit the wall flying like a ragdoll and then bounced back on the ground with a sickening crack they were forcefully ejected, landing on the floor back in the Dowager House looking at each other.

"Hogsmeade, maybe," Ron suggested, but his heart wasn't in it.

"Never seen either of them before, but I suspect the faces belong to some random Muggle given that they had access to Polyjuice," Draco said. "Maybe we could track someone through your brother, but it's surprisingly easy to get hold of someone's hair…"

Ron surprised him by snorting suddenly.

"You'd better believe it," he said vaguely, without elaborating.

The League meeting, held in the drawing room at the Dowager House, was similarly bereft of useful conclusions. A trip back to the location where Hermione had been held had yielded very little. They agreed to maintain constant vigilance (some of the members, like Amos Diggory, never understood why a quiet sniggering went through the room at the words). It was assumed that Hermione would want to determine her own response to the attack once she was awake and had time to recover.

A half-hearted suggestion to publicise Hermione's account of what had happened in _The Quibbler_ was shot down by Luna Lovegood, of all people. Calmly, she pointed out that since they had no proof, the paper could be sued by the Ministry for libel if _The Quibbler_ inferred that it was behind the attack. Omitting the Ministry reference would only serve to leave the field open for their opponents to frame someone else, probably Draco.

As the League members left one by one through the Floo, Ron hung back to make sure he could exchange a few words with Malfoy before going home.

"Thanks, mate," he said in a low voice as he watched Luna going back to the offices of _The Quibbler _– it was no longer churned out from her father's kitchen, and even had paid staff now. Hermione usually did the proofreading (for free); her fervour for facts supported by proper sources could only be rivalled by her dedication to proper punctuation.

Draco, who was standing next to Ron, looked almost startled.

"And good luck – you'll need it," Ron added before Apparating home, hoping that his mother still was at Shell Cottage and blissfully oblivious to what had occurred behind her back at the Burrow. The summons to the League meeting, which she had declined, had been rather sparse on details and no blood magic had been mentioned at the meeting. Still, Ron would rather do some cleaning up in the broom shed before she got home to be certain that she wouldn't find out. She hadn't raised Fred and George without developing some uncanny instincts where her offspring was concerned.

* * *

Draco checked on Hermione several times through the night; she slept peacefully, just as Charlie had said she would. He tiptoed around the house while both of its female human occupants slept, waiting for hours before anyone except the house-elves stirred.

There was time to have a very late breakfast at the side of his mother's bed before Charlie Weasley called around to proclaim Hermione fully healed; apparently she would be a bit sore for a few days, but everything was back in working order.

The stillness of the house did nothing to dispel the sense of impending doom, and Draco was irrationally afraid of how Hermione would react once he had to tell her about the damned blood wards. He stopped his pacing in the middle of a stride, admonishing himself to act like a Malfoy and a Slytherin. Explanations were for weaklings and Hufflepuffs: he had no intention to volunteer any incriminating information, and it wasn't even certain to come up.

His brittle conviction that it would all turn out for the best carried him through the interminable afternoon until Hermione surprised him by appearing in the drawing room unaided, dressed in her normal Muggle clothes. She had never got into the habit of wearing robes around the house; having grown up with central heating before she came to Hogwarts, she found it much too awkward to sport a full set of robes in addition to what she still deemed ordinary clothing underneath. She tended to use Warming charms instead, when she remembered.

For a moment, Draco was at a loss for what to say.

"Thank you," Hermione smiled wryly, breaking the awkward silence, "for rescuing me. Miffy wouldn't tell me anything other than that you brought me back here."

"I am pleased to have been of service," Draco said formally, suddenly finding his confidence again. "Charlie Weasley looked you over and pronounced you healed this morning. He took care of two broken bones and a concussion, but otherwise I'm told there was no serious damage."

She sat down, legs still a little wobbly from spending so long horisontally.

"Well, I feel fine now, anyway." Before she was asked Miffy produced a tea tray, pushing a cup into Hermione's grateful hands before leaving them alone again.

"Miffy may have overstated the matter slightly. Ronald Weasley was also instrumental in bringing you back," Draco said unprompted, not knowing quite why he volunteered that bit of information.

"Why don't you tell me while I have some tea?" Hermione hadn't eaten for an eternity, and descended like a locust on the tea tray as soon as Miffy was gone.

Afterwards, Draco couldn't quite tell what made him decide to be honest about the whole thing. Oh yes, Weasley: he would no doubt make sure Hermione found out about the blood wards if Draco omitted to tell her. Weasley's conspicuous absence today was a gauntlet thrown down: tell her, or else I will do it for you.

Dispassionately, Draco told Hermione about the endless Floo'ing to track down her whereabouts and the missive with the Seers' Eyeball, which still sat on the table in the study; he even brought her in to show it.

Its surface gleamed like the London sky at night, whispers of movement visible right under the surface. Draco was planning to blast it out of existence as soon as he had done some research to make sure it didn't bring the house down with it. Hermione seemed both fascinated and slightly repulsed by it; she looked quite happy to close the door to the study and withdraw to the drawing room again.

"We knew then that you hadn't taken off to track down Camelot, and we had a fairly good idea of who was behind it," Draco continued his story.

"Hmm." Hermione had obviously come to the same conclusion and seemed to be more interested in how Ron and Draco had morphed into a 'we', however temporarily, judging by the way her eyebrows quirked upwards when he mentioned it.

"So then we had to track you down…" Draco was curiously unwilling to continue the sentence.

"Yes, I was wondering exactly how did you do that? They would hardly have forgotten to put up wards, had they?"

Bugger. She did have a gift for asking the right questions, all right.

"I used family wards to find you, and then we were fortunately able to Apparate straight in." Malfoys didn't sound (or feel) guilty, Draco reminded himself; they calmly and dispassionately determined the best course of action to achieve their aims, and stuck to it. "We had a backup team on standby at the Burrow, just in case-" he continued in the same smooth, unconcerned voice.

"Wait a minute, what sort of 'family wards' were these?" Hermione asked, and he could almost hear the inverted commas around the words. "You never mentioned anything like that before."

"I never had occasion to - they're an old tradition. A pure-blood tradition, so I didn't think you would be interested," Draco said archly and she gave him a hard glance, clearly finding it a bit difficult to swallow considering that he had been a witness to her enthusiastic embrace of most things magical since she was eleven.

"Is that right? What do they do, these pure-blood wards of yours?" she asked suspiciously.

"They allow me to find you almost anywhere and to Apparate to where you are, except from behind extremely strong wards, like at Azkaban or Hogwarts." Hermione's eyes were narrowed and her back was suddenly very straight; Draco mentally ticked off all the signs that she soon was going to explode in a fit of temper. And over what? The wards had saved her life; she would do well to come off her high horse and thank him instead.

"I see. Do they work the other way around, so I could have gone after you instead?"

"No, only-"

"Now that's a surprise! So the wards are absolutely no use then, except for you controlling me?" Hermione's voice was getting shriller and shriller.

"They were good enough to save your life yesterday. Would it kill you to show some gratitude?" Draco snarled.

Hermione drew a very deep breath, and then another one, and when she spoke again her voice was almost normal; except normally he didn't get the impression that she was wound as tight as a coiled spring.

"I am grateful, believe me. I am. I'm also very curious about those wards, and why you never told me about them before." Draco looked at her rather incredulously, and she smirked. "Oh, I know _exactly_ why you never told me about them before, but it would be amusing to see you sweat to come up with something convincing."

For a second, it felt just like a normal argument between them.

"Fine. I didn't think you'd be very happy to find out about them," he said. Hermione's lips were so thin with disapproval now that they almost had disappeared; it looked like she had picked up some tricks from McGonagall.

"Give the man a small prize. No, I'm not very bloody happy. Take them off, now."

Draco had honestly never expected that, having forgotten that he never had told her straight out what type of wards they were. Suddenly his stomach was trying to retire to somewhere around his knees.

"I can't."

"What do you mean you can't?" The shrill voice was back.

"It's not possible. They're blood wards, you can't just cast a Finite and be done with it." Maybe he could have put that a little more diplomatically, Draco thought as she visibly blanched.

"Let me get this straight," Hermione said, in an utterly calm voice that would have sent Ron diving for cover somewhere in the next county. "You've used blood magic on me without my consent or knowledge. You can find me almost anywhere, and there is nothing I can do about it - it's irreversible. Is that correct?"

"Yes." It was only by dredging up the memory of his mentor that Draco managed to cling on to his composed façade. Snape would have been unfazed by this. Then again, Snape was unlikely to ever have done anything quite as stupid.

"And when did you do this?" Hermione asked in the same tone of voice, still preternaturally calm and collected.

"After we got married the Muggle way." That seemed to surprised her; Draco suppressed a flash of anger at her apparent presumption that he would have done it before they were irreversibly linked. He did have some honour, after all; she always had the choice to turn down his offer.

"Is there anything else I should know about?" she asked, with a colder voice than even his mother could achieve. Draco wracked his brain; if there was anything else Hermione ever was likely to find out about it was probably better to come out with it now.

"No, there isn't. And despite what you might think I've only used them once, and it was to save you-"

"Save me? _Save_ me?" she asked in a high-pitched voice.

"Yes, Granger, to save you – or you wouldn't be standing here all righteous and accusing!"

"Don't give me that! You know very well you had no right to do that. Otherwise you would have told me about it from the start, you hypocrite!"

"And would you have listened to me?" Draco answered his own question: "No, and you would have been dead now. Would you prefer that?"

"It doesn't matter! You took my ability to choose way from me, that's what this is about, you bastard – not what happened yesterday." Hermione's chest was heaving and her eyes were dark; she was almost beautiful when she was in this state Draco noticed distantly, before dismissing the thought as utterly irrelevant.

"We've always had blood wards in my family. That's how- how my parents survived two wars," he offered unexpectedly.

"Then why wouldn't you have told me, and had me do the same for you? Or was my blood not _pure_ enough?" Hermione sneered.

"I knew you wouldn't understand, and I was right, wasn't I?"

"You never even tried to explain, so forgive me for believing that it had everything to do with the fact that you had no desire to be traceable. It was perfectly suitable for _me_, though," she said, her voice thick with derision, and he suddenly didn't know what to say. Hermione cast her head backwards, searching for composure among the cupids adorning the ceiling without apparent success. When she bowed her head down again she shot Draco a look of pure revulsion.

"I knew I shouldn't trust you, I knew it from the moment I saw you in my living room. I knew it!" Hermione's voice was shaking with anger, and her words jostled him from his momentary stupor.

"That's it, isn't it?" he asked coldly. "It doesn't matter what I do, all you perfect Gryffindors ever will see is a Slytherin and Death Eater, and that's the end of it."

Something changed then; all bets were off and everything they normally steered clear off in their fights, landmines that would rent their delicate cease-fire to shreds, was coming out.

"Who could blame me? You blackmail me, use Dark magic against me, plot behind my back, and then you have the gall to expect me to be grateful!"

"While you're always whiter than white, Granger. No matter what sort of destruction you leave behind you, you're always so fucking convinced you're right!"

Hermione almost wobbled, but she recovered quickly.

"At least I started out with good intentions! How dare you lecture me, when all you've ever cared for in your life is yourself?"

"What a good little Gryffindor you are," Draco taunted, throwing caution and common sense to the wind. "You should see Slytherin – no one else there is looking out for you, so you had better learn how to do it yourself!"

"How dare you?" Hermione almost whispered. If she hadn't been permanently cured of using her wand in anger she would probably have hexed him. "You, the little pure-blood prince, who thought your name should be enough to pave the way for you?"

"Why do you think the pure-bloods followed Voldemort in the first place, you stupid bint? The odds were stacked against us-"

"You have no bloody idea what you're talking about, Malfoy. You were born into privilege and being sorted into Slytherin didn't change that one iota. Your father didn't exactly try to hide which house he was in when he had the Minister's ear, did he?"

"Leave my father out of this!"

"You never shied away from bringing him up and tell the rest of us how important he was when we were at school, so why should I?"

"You don't know anything about my father, Granger, so shut up!" A vein was pulsating on Draco's forehead and two red spots burned on his cheeks; he could feel every throb of his pulse echo in his ears, like he was standing in the eye of a hurricane.

"So you're allowed to set blood wards on me, while I can't even mention your father. Does that sound reasonable to you, Malfoy?" Hermione countered, scorn dripping from her words.

"You're not exactly your own parents' pride and joy, Granger – ashamed, are you? Or are they?" Draco was reaching for straws and Hermione was incandescent with rage; it was only with difficulty she could control the magic that threatened to erupt from her. His skin was crawling with it.

"I had to send them away to save them from your comrades in arms, you piece of scum. You know that. Don't you dare using that against me."

"Same as always, Granger - you're always right and everyone else is wrong. Do you have any idea of why I joined the Death Eaters? I had to, to save _my_ parents," he hissed the last words, "but you never stop to wonder why people on the other side do what they do, do you?"

"And the five years before that when I sullied the very ground I walked on were pure coincidence then, were they? You had no problems with Muggle-borns and Muggles being inferior, it was just the killing you couldn't stomach!"

"Clearly you aren't afflicted with the same scruples!"

None of them had their wands out; somewhere they retained enough sense to realize that blowing up the house would be a bad idea. As they stood facing each other, momentarily silent while trying to catch their breaths, there was a short second of an odd calm. An observer may have mistaken it for a cessation of hostilities.

There was no going back for either of them; too many things had been said, too many sore points raised. There had been a time when Hermione had been able to ignore Draco's taunts and slurs, but back then they had mostly been about her blood. Somehow, during a year and a half of marriage he had learnt enough about her to know exactly what would hurt the most.

"Is there anything else you'd like to say?" she asked with asperity, seemingly reverting to her former manner; this forced display of composure didn't fool Draco.

"There is no need, is there, since you seem to have all the answers as usual," he replied through clenched teeth.

"Do you have any idea of how serious this is? I could go to the Ministry and have you sent to Azkaban for it."

"That's right – go run to the Ministry, why don't you? Tell the teachers that Malfoy is picking on you and they will sort it all out. Grow up, Granger," he admonished her, an ugly sneer on his face.

"Try rubbing your two brain cells together for a second and _think_, Malfoy. If they catch you using Dark magic you'll be shipped off to Azkaban for good before you can say 'kneazle'. Not a clever move, was it?" Unsaid, the words 'to join your father' hung heavily in the air, but she had added enough fuel to the fire as it was.

"What do you care?" he asked snidely.

"I don't give a toss!" Hermione retorted but realized with a pang that it wasn't actually true – for some reason, she would be sorry if he was shipped off to prison and never heard of again. It wasn't that she thought that no one deserved to be in Azkaban. If Bellatrix Lestrange had been alive, Hermione would happily have thrown away the key and let the Dementors have at her. Even in her rage she could admit that Malfoy wasn't remotely on par with his aunt, regardless of what he had done this time. "How do you think that would affect the League, not to mention the risk that they would make you squeal and give us all up?"

"I would not break my word!" Draco drew himself up to his full height and almost shouted at her. She almost smiled at his insistence.

"You can't know that - how do you know what they would throw at you?"

"I do," he said curtly, and Hermione remembered that he, too, had been held in Azkaban after the Battle of Hogwarts.

"Right. Regardless, I'd rather not take your word for it. Especially considering that you've been lying to me about blood wards for the last year and a half."

"I was not lying."

"Spare me the semantics, Malfoy. If you ever try to cast as much as a cheering charm behind my back again I'll make Voldemort look forgiving in comparison." She had calmed down slightly and noticed him flinch at Riddle's name with grim satisfaction. "I think we're done here," she continued. "I'll go pack my things. Please give my excuses to your mother."

"What?" Draco looked utterly flummoxed.

"I'm leaving now," Hermione said in exasperated tones. All she wanted to do right now was to scream and cry and kick something, and unless she left at this moment when she wasn't actually raging, it would probably be Malfoy she did it to rather than a handy wall somewhere. She would still be married to him afterwards, so she would prefer the wall.

"But you live here."

"I lived here," Hermione corrected him, sounding almost like she always did when she thought he was being dense on purpose. "Did you really think I'd sleep under the same roof as you, after this?"

"But you can't leave- What about our agreement?"

"Don't worry, Malfoy, it still stands." Hermione was anxious to get away now, poised to turn on her heel and go upstairs to her room for the last time.

"You can't just move out like that, what if people find out?" Of course that was all Malfoy would care about, and Hermione felt something that could have been disappointment had that not been a ridiculous idea.

"We'll sort something out, don't you worry," she said with heavy sarcasm. For a second, Draco almost looked bereft and her traitorous heart lifted. Then he got angry again, and she wasn't sure if the moment ever had happened.

"Run away, Granger – that's what you do best, isn't it?"

"What do you mean?" Her attention was back on him again.

"You've been running for the last eight years; no wonder it comes natural to you!" Draco flinched minutely from a curse that never came, before she stopped her hand from drifting towards her wand.

"That's ironic, coming from the man refusing to acknowledge that he has a father," Hermione retorted, forcing the words out from between jaws clenched so tight it was starting to hurt.

"You're doing a good job of pretending it never happened, aren't you?" Draco asked, as if he hadn't heard her. It was as if he was on autopilot; when Hermione thought about it afterwards, she didn't think he could have stopped himself. "It's no use. It may as well be written that you killed Harry Potter on your forehead."

"Stop," she whispered, but he didn't heed her.

"How does it feel? Do you still have nightmares about it?"

"FUCK YOU, MALFOY!" Suddenly she was banging her fists on Draco's chest, shouting in his face. "DON'T YOU DARE- YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT'S LIKE!" She caught a sob, and hated herself for it. "You can go to hell, for all I care," she said in a voice coated with icy contempt. "Don't think I haven't noticed that you don't have any real friends, so you have no idea what you're talking about. Lucky for you."

On her parting words she swung around and left the room. Draco was left standing there, arms hanging uselessly against his sides and his eyes empty.


	20. Ch 19 - Epiphanies For Slow Learners

**Thanks to MysticDew this story is much better than it would have been if I had been left to my own devices. Any remaining mistakes are my own. **

* * *

**Chapter 19**

**Epiphanies For Slow Learners **

**-oOo-**

* * *

**2AM, 17****th**** of November 2006 - The Dower House, Malfoy Manor, Wiltshire**

Draco squeezed his eyes shut, as if ignoring the world would make sit up and notice that it wasn't meeting his standards.

This was not supposed to have happened.

He really wasn't as vain as Hermione made him out to be, but he had been confident in his ability to win her over eventually. Unfortunately, Draco never quite got started on that. Somehow he never found time for the chivalrous gestures he had pictured would make Hermione putty in his hands after she got over her initial animosity; rather than Draco getting into her good graces as she got more used to him, they seemed to have gone straight to the bickering stage.

They had intrigued and campaigned and argued together, and sometimes he suspected Hermione knew him much better than she should. For all that, he didn't seem to have advanced any further in her esteem than Longbottom, say. Draco was pretty sure she liked him better than either Zabini or Bill Weasley, but that wasn't what he had been aiming for. Whatever trifling progress he had made was shot to pieces now, anyway.

"Damn it!" he roared suddenly, bearing his fist down on the armrest on the couch to release some of his frustration. Regardless of Hermione's very natural appreciation of his appearance, he wasn't fool enough to think that she had any sort of tender feelings for him. She had been very successful in distracting him from his original plan to make her fall for him.

It wasn't as preposterous as it sounded. Once Draco had decided that his plans would be best served by marrying Hermione, it was only natural to deduce that their relationship would progress more satisfactorily if she at least had a faiblesse for him. He had seen it often enough among his parents' friends; you didn't remain a pure-blood family for centuries if you practiced the self-indulgence of marrying for love.

To Draco, it had seemed natural that they would develop if not love, then at least mutual affection, just like his parents had. He had known that he couldn't spring that on Hermione if he was to have even the slightest chance of her agreeing to his proposal; he wasn't stupid.

Instead, he should have busied himself afterwards, persuading her their marriage was her advantage, and encouraging her affections to grow gradually. Naturally, he had realized from the beginning that losing her parents and being exiled made her particularly vulnerable to him. Additionally, Hermione was a practical woman; if Draco could make it seem more attractive to stay married to him than the opposite, chances were that she would make the best of the situation.

And now any trust Hermione had placed in him had been shattered, and short of raising the dead Draco had no hold over her this time. Even an imbecile could see that Hermione no longer had any time for people she couldn't trust. He had no doubt she would scrupulously fulfill her obligations according to their agreement, while refusing to have anything to do with him beyond that.

Draco summoned the decanter on the sideboard and poured himself a glass of Firewhiskey, slugging back a good half without bothering to stop and breathe. As he collapsed in violent coughs at the burning in his throat, he could hear the mirror tut-tutting at his ineptitude.

That was the final straw; the mirror exploded in thousands of shards and suddenly the room looked like it was covered in frost.

"Draco! What on earth are you doing?"

There was only one thing missing this accursed day, and here she came. He took another sip of whiskey, a bit more carefully this time, to calm himself.

"Spare me, mother. Believe me, you don't want to know."

Narcissa closed her mouth abruptly, tiny lines she liked to pretend had been banished by the best wizarding cosmetics money could buy appearing around her lips. Her gaze flew around the room, totting up the destruction and sighing over the shards of her grandfather's mirror, before returning to linger on Draco's face. What she saw there made her pull back into the hall and lean heavily against the wall for support.

Her son looked like he was carrying the world on his shoulders, and the world seemed to slipping down out of his grasp. It seemed to be only a few short years ago she has sent Draco off to Hogwarts; now, he looked like an old man with the years piling up on him, shoulders drawn in and disappointment etched deep in the lines around his mouth.

Mother and son nursed their demons in private that night, in the Malfoy way. Of Hermione there was no trace.

Morning brought some succour and Draco didn't look quite as haggard at the breakfast table. Narcissa forbore from asking any questions, since answers were unlikely to be forthcoming; the house-elves had informed her that Hermione didn't return last night and she was perfectly capable of drawing her own conclusions from that. After picking his way through a bowl of porridge Draco disappeared without telling Narcissa when he was going; she was left nursing her grapefruit and considering whether asking Hermione, whenever she turned up, would have any chance of success.

Draco had woken up in the wreckage of the drawing room, blanching at the shambles from last night. Grimly, he decided that as long as Hermione fulfilled her part of their agreement it didn't matter what the stupid bint thought about him or where she bloody well lived.

Admittedly, it would have been easier if Draco would have been able to work his charm on her – the incessant whining about ethics was getting tedious – but she would keep her promises and not cause any scandals, and that was really all he cared about. There might be some awkwardness when they had to interact in public, but mostly for her. Malfoys didn't have any issues when it came to keeping up appearances, or they would be long extinct by now.

Hermione was at least as committed as Draco was to his master plan (or rather, the most important of them) by now, so even after she had delivered the Manor back into his hands and they finally had overthrown the Ministry, she was likely to keep devoting her considerable energies to ensure the continued existence of the British wizarding world.

In fact, this was more an occasion to be grateful than annoyed; Draco wouldn't have to endure her grating voice quite as often anymore, or pretend to listen to her asinine views on anything between the best way of trimming a quill and Hippogriff rights. Maybe Hermione would even realize that if she was to have any children, it was going to be with Draco, so she would agree to bear him an heir in time, too.

He understood that witches got broody at a certain age, so all he had to do was to bide his time and she would come to him.

Draco dwelt a little bit too long on that thought, on how he would make Hermione beg his pardon for her stupidity in throwing a fit over blood wards when they had saved her life, before he realized that it didn't really behove a disinterested spectator to dwell on quite that level of detail in their future interactions.

To hell with it.

He went off on his broom to clear the cobwebs from his mind and focus his mind on what really was important, by flying over the land that should be rightfully his.

* * *

During the following weeks Draco noticed that nothing seemed to be quite right any more; his tea was always slightly too hot, and the sun was either too pale or glared so much it gave him a headache. He couldn't really summon up much enthusiasm for anything; all his normal pursuits seemed stale, whether he tried researching, flying, business or scheming to bring down the Ministry.

The feeling of wrongness permeated everywhere; it followed him down Knockturn Alley as he sought to replace some of his more exotic potions ingredients, and it wrapped itself around his shoulders as comfortably as an old cloak at the breakfast table. It even kept him from enjoying the rare spectacle of seeing the Wimbourne Wasps trouncing the Falmouth Falcons with only a few cracked skulls as collateral damage.

It got so bad that even his mother noticed; contrary to his usual cultivated calm, Draco was unusually fidgety and couldn't seem to make himself focus.

It did cross his mind that Granger could have cursed him as she stormed out, all rightful Gryffindor indignation while disregarding the bigger picture. After checking that his reproductive organs were in working order Draco crossed it off the list of possibilities; even if she had been able to slip beneath his guard, his symptoms were a bit too benign for something cast by an irate Granger.

The prospect of tracking her down (_sans_ the assistance of the Malfoy wards, obviously, since she had caused such a fuss about that the last time) had filled him with anticipation; he would have enjoyed exerting some rightful retribution.

They did communicate once she had cooled down, of course; the first letter Draco received from her characteristically reminded him that their presence was required at the War Orphan Fund benefit the following night, and that he needed to be there at 8.15. She had underlined the time three times.

Outwardly, they greeted each other with more warmth than was usually their custom; only Draco heard Hermione's whispered admonitions that he had to make sure he spoke to Whitterswell about the upcoming cauldron review. Previously she might have cracked a joke about Whitterswell's tendency to drone on and on, promising to save him if he got stuck, but tonight she was all business.

So was Draco.

He had no intention of showing Hermione that he wasn't his normal self. It had got so bad that his mother had resorted to plying him with potions in a vain effort to jolt him out of the doldrums. They did seem to have a slight effect, at least for a few days leading up to the gala, but curiously their effects didn't linger after it and Narcissa eventually abandoned the attempt.

It annoyed Draco immensely to be dismissed so summarily by Hermione at the benefit and other occasions like that, as if he was nothing more than an errant house-elf, but he reminded himself that he should be glad that she kept her distance. They started to transact their business via owl, or Floo, in case they didn't want their communications to be intercepted. Only a few public appearances per month were required to keep up the fiction of their marriage, so he saw very little of her. Their _other_ work could usually also be conducted separately, as long as they both appeared at League meetings.

Good riddance, Draco reminded himself, and squeezed the armrest of his chair so hard that his knuckles turned white when Hermione invariably sat down next to Weasley at the other side of the room at the next meeting of the League.

It took him exactly two months, three weeks and five days to realize where his persistent malaise came from, and who had caused it. Draco had his epiphany when he was sitting on his bed, twisting an ugly Muggle hairclip she had left behind in his hands. Hermione, unlike his mother, tended towards the utilitarian and was unlikely to turn up for breakfast wearing Goblin-made jewellery.

"Oh, bugger," he moaned when the realization hit him, burying his face in his hands.

It was Granger's fault all right, but it wasn't a curse she had cast on him.

* * *

"Run this by me again," Ron demanded.

He was dressed in orange pyjamas which made Draco want to shield his eyes from the impact, and was sitting on his boyhood bed at the Burrow. Mrs Weasley had been very surprised to find Draco on her doorstep on her way to letting the hens out. If Draco's mother had instilled anything into him, it was that it was unconscionably rude to drag people out of their beds unless for dire emergencies. That was the reason he had been pacing outside the Burrow for an hour and a half after having his big idea, waiting for some sign that the occupants finally had dragged their lazy arses out of bed.

Despite her apparent misgivings Mrs Weasley had let him in to see Ron. That alone told Draco that Hermione wasn't living there; he was simultaneously pleased that she hadn't gone straight to Weasley, and disheartened that he still had no idea where she was.

And that was why Draco was explaining a simple idea for the second time to the Weasel, who really should have grown out of letting his mouth hang open by now.

"I need you to tell me everything you can remember about Hermione's parents. Especially about their new names and where they went after she Obliviated them." Was that so hard to understand?

"And what do you want to do to them?" Weasley asked suspiciously.

"What do you mean?" Here he was, trying to do something nice (although he did have ulterior motives; who hadn't?), and all Draco got was mistrust about his intentions.

"They're random Muggles now, so what could you possibly want to find that out for? Hermione has checked up on them, so she knows they're alive and all."

"Well I do, so why don't you just tell me?"

"Sorry, mate." Where did _that_ come from, Draco wondered. They weren't mates, had never been mates and most definitely wouldn't be in the future. "Hermione would kill me if she knew I'd given out their address without finding out what you were going to do with it, so you need to tell me."

Ron grabbed his cup of tea from the bed stand.

"I assume it's got something to do with what happened after we rescued her?" he asked. It hadn't escaped Draco's attention that Ron was pretty pleased to have saved Hermione for once, rather the more common occurrence of her getting him out of trouble. At the latest meeting of the League it had emerged that Weasley certainly wasn't above milking the damsel in distress angle when it suited him.

"Yes," Draco answered, thinking furiously.

"Maybe you should start by telling me why you think turning up at her parents' place will make Hermione less angry with you?" It was far too easy to believe that Weasley was as stupid as he looked, and Draco had fallen into the trap again.

"If you do anything to mess with her parents she'll find out, and then she'll kill you. Not joking, mate." Ron continued and brightened at the prospect. "Then again, maybe that's not so bad. As long as I can keep her out of Azkaban this time…"

"Here's a quill. Just write down the address, and you then can start planning how to get her out of jail," Draco offered. This might just be his lucky day.

"Nope, Malfoy. No dice. Try again." Weasley was enjoying this far too much, and Draco couldn't seem come up with anything remotely credible. He really should have thought this through before going here; he had just been so elated at the prospect of getting Hermione to talk to him again.

"Right." Ron stood up. "I'm going to have breakfast. If you want some grub while you're trying to come up with something, you can come with me downstairs."

Draco ended up at the worn kitchen table at the Burrow being served sausages and eggs by Mrs Weasley, whom he had been slightly intimidated by ever since he saw her bring his Aunt Bellatrix down.

Conversation was stilted at best, polite enquiries about the health of very distant connections faltering quickly. Hermione was the natural hub connecting them all, but a casual question about her brought on all the Malfoy hauteur Mrs Weasley had no time for. Ron defused the situation by asking Draco how he fancied Puddlemere United's chances to win the league, and to everyone's relief Quidditch kept them going through breakfast.

Afterwards, Ron brought Draco into the living room, where he bought himself some time by inspecting the aging furniture, random knick-knacks and family photos filled to bursting point with redheads.

"The only reason I haven't kicked you out yet is that I'm unbearably curious. I won't be waiting forever, though. Tell me the truth now, or off you go." Ron had admitted to himself at breakfast that he would probably be happy with a really good lie too, but he wasn't going to tell Malfoy that. He had formed his own opinion of Malfoy's true motivations a while ago, and he was pretty certain Draco had no intention to do any harm to Hermione's parents. However, that didn't mean that he intended to hand out their address unless he was satisfied with Malfoy's explanation.

"I want to see if anything can be done to repair their memories."

Ron started shaking his head even before Malfoy had finished the sentence.

"It's been checked, trust me. They've been investigated by experts from St. Mungo's and the Ministry, and the memories are gone. Lost completely." Draco thought he caught a glimpse of pity in Weasley's eyes, but it was probably just light reflected from the mirror above the fireplace.

"And you would normally have full confidence in the probity of these _soi-disant_ experts?" Weasley looked like someone had hit him with a Bludger from behind, so Draco translated: "Would you trust St. Mungo's and the Ministry to tell the truth?"

"Hermione doesn't exactly trust them either, does she? She won't talk much about it," or at all with me, Draco thought bitterly, "but I know it was someone she trusted who told her."

"Who?" Draco demanded.

"I don't know, she never told me." Weasley looked like he was speaking to a dim-witted child; clearly Draco would have to find out for himself.

"And the address?"

Afterwards, he wondered why Weasley hadn't asked why he suddenly wanted to restore the Grangers' memories. It briefly occurred to him that it could be because there was no need to ask, but he dismissed the thought. Weasley couldn't be _that_ perceptive.

-oOo-

* * *

**There has been some amazing guest reviews, so I'd just like to say thank you very much! Normally I always try to reply to reviews by PM, but since I can't do that ****to unsigned reviews I'll put it here instead. E**very review is very much appreciated.  



	21. Ch 20 - The Past Is A Foreign Country

**As always, thanks to MysticDew!**

* * *

******Chapter 20 **

******The Past Is A Foreign Country**

******-oOo-**

* * *

**4PM, the 31st of March 2007 - 207 Forrest Street, Palmyra, Western Australia**

The Granger residence was a comfortable-looking bungalow surrounded by palm trees; it exuded a quiet confidence and seemed to be leaning back from the street as it sat elevated above the pavement where Draco was standing. The British Ministry of Magic must have given up surveillance on this place years ago, but he quickly established that Hermione hadn't. He had quite some work to do in order to neutralize her wards. She must have made arrangements with someone locally to alert her if they were breached, but other than that he doubted very much that anyone outside the Australian Ministry were aware that the Wilkins were anything other than an average British ex-pat couple.

Despite this, Draco had no wish to advertise his presence; he was Polyjuiced as a slightly overweight, ginger-haired office jockey in his late thirties who happened to have been standing next to Draco in a queue at Harrods before he left London. The unaccustomed humidity and unrelenting sunshine made perspiration roll down his forehead; he wiped it away with an impatient gesture. He had better get this over with so he could return to the hotel and come up with a plan.

Theoretically it was possible to Apparate to the other side of the world, if you weren't too fussy about arriving in one piece. Fortunately, there was little in this world Malfoy money couldn't buy; illegal international Portkeys were eminently obtainable if you didn't mind spending the average annual Ministry salary on one. Or two, if you wanted to come back. Draco had a return Portkey in three days, and by then he needed to collect as much information as possible. There was no time for procrastination.

It took Draco a minute to figure out how to use the doorbell; Muggles really had the strangest contraptions to replace what was perfectly straightforward when done by magic. It turned out to be even easier than he had expected to be admitted into the house.

"Of course we'd be happy to donate. Please come in and sit down, and I'll get my wallet," Mrs Granger said immediately; he didn't even need to use a mild Compulsion charm. She was perfectly willing to hand over her money to a stranger with a British accent saying he was collecting for cancer research. Draco had picked the charity from Hermione's pile of mail in Bermondsey Street. Clearly, SPEW and other well-meaning, if sometimes misguided, attempts by his wife to make the world a better place had been inspired by her parents' example. "I'll get you a glass of water too. You look like you need one," she offered.

"Thank you," he replied, his gratitude sincere for once. As much as he hated to admit that he wasn't impervious to the elements, he was parched. Mrs Granger disappeared into the kitchen, and Draco was left alone in a room filled with bookshelves, wide couches beckoning to his tired legs. It felt as if he had been here before; he had expected to be on edge, as he normally was when he had to visit the Muggle world, but in the Grangers' bright sitting room he was oddly at ease.

Much later, the similarities between Hermione's flat and the Grangers' sunny Australian abode would strike him; there was something in the way they choose to arrange their living space that connected the two, even to someone as unfamiliar with Muggle furnishings as he was.

"Here you go." Mrs Granger returned, with a blessedly cool glass of water and her handbag. "Do sit down, you must be tired. The heat still gets to me, even after all those years. When did you get to Australia?"

"Oh, only recently," he drawled.

"I wish I could tell you it gets easier with the heat, but I'm afraid that wouldn't be true."

Draco couldn't stop looking at her, now that she had sat down next to him. The shape of her face: the cheekbones and the firmly rounded chin, just one shade short of being forbidding, all was pure Hermione. The glint in her eyes told him that he had better keep his guard up. It had come as a shock to find grey hairs liberally sprinkled through her red-brown mane and wrinkles around Mrs Granger's eyes. His own mother looked twenty years younger, even though he knew they were around the same age, and Narcissa had born her share of worries and lived through two wars. Of course, Mrs Granger had no idea she even had a daughter, so she could hardly have been concerned about her well-being.

"Now, did you have a form you wanted me to fill out?" she asked. Draco admonished himself to concentrate at the task at hand and pulled out his clipboard; he could look at Hermione's mother in a Pensieve later, if he absolutely had to.

"Now, if you would sign here, and here, please… and fill out this part too-" While Mrs Granger was busy filling in her details, he cast some covert diagnostic charms.

"Will I sign here?" This was no good. She was very quick, and the readings he was getting weren't making sense. He needed more time.

"Yes, please," he muttered, and concentrated. She stopped in the middle of scribbling her signature (he wasn't surprised that her handwriting, too, was reminiscent of Hermione's), and vacuously stared into thin air, a half-smile on her lips. Draco had used a mild anesthetic charm he had picked up from a book on Healing techniques, and he should be able to stage a Quidditch match in the sitting room without her noticing anything amiss. In the middle of scribbling notes on a parchment, it took him a second or two to register the sound of the front door opening (did they not even lock their door?), and he barely had time to hide his wand under the table before Mr Granger came looking for his wife.

"Darling, are you home?" he called out, and when no one answered he continued in and spotted Draco. "Who are you?" he asked sharply, when he noticed his wife's vacant expression and the stranger sitting next to her and her open handbag.

"I'm collecting for the Australian Cancer Research Foundation, and your wife invited me in. She seemed a bit dizzy just now, but she was fine just a second ago," Draco attempted to explain, frowning in mock-concern; all he wanted was for Alan Granger to move close enough to one of the armchairs so he would land comfortably when Draco used his wand.

Finally, the older man moved, and Draco sat him down with a thud in the leather armchair. All this would have been so much easier if he could have Obliviated them, but the specialist he had consulted considered further memory-related charms a most unwise venture until they knew exactly what Hermione had done. Even when they were still on speaking terms, her parents had been a touchy subject; appealing to Hermione for information now would forfeit the whole purpose of this jaunt to Australia, and probably be fruitless.

Draco cast several charms, filling a whole roll of parchment with observations before he was done, and then surreptitiously removed the charms. Once Alan could see that Helen was fine and had invited the stranger in by her own accord, he became markedly friendlier and even walked Draco out, chatting amiably.

* * *

A week later, Draco was back in Australia with his expert for hire, Lars Schledinger, who set to work examining the data retrieved from the Grangers. Draco was left kicking his heels in their hotel suite; exploring the mini bar kept him entertained for a few minutes, then he returned to irritably flicking through some of the books salvaged from the family library that he had thought could be useful. Since he wasn't even permitted into Schledinger's room, they were about as much use as a chocolate wand.

After more than a day had elapsed and Draco was ready to pull his hair out, Schledinger finally emerged. He would not tell his impatient employer what he had discovered; he only insisted that he now would have to meet the subjects.

"That'll be difficult," Draco said, lips compressed to a thin line.

"I must see them myself, or I will not be able to help you."

"Can you guarantee that you can restore their memories if you see them?"

"I cannot guarantee anything, at least not before I meet the subjects and carry out my own diagnostic spells."

"You know very well that they're Muggles. I can't just walk up to their house and explain that a wizard would like to check their memories, thank you very much."

"Then I cannot fulfill my commission, and will return home."

Draco closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"I'll see what I can arrange."

Compared to the many glorious deeds performed by Malfoys through the centuries, surely coming up with a way of sneaking two wizards into the Grangers' house couldn't be that difficult?

* * *

Schledinger was complaining about the heat again. Since they left the hotel he had been complaining about the heat, using Muggle transportation, having to wear a boiler suit instead of robes, the heat, the fact that he was Polyjuiced to look like a spotty teenager and not the head technician, the weight of the toolbox he was carrying, and the heat. Draco testily dealt with one of the complaints, asking Schledinger if he would prefer to do the talking instead, and mostly ignored the rest. As they walked up Forrest Street, the bleating was really getting to him.

"-and I do not see why we could not Apparate in, clean and nice like wizards, instead of Muggle trains and this infernal walking." Draco caught the tail end of Schledinger's latest litany, and he couldn't help himself for all the gold in Gringotts.

"Because you said yourself, in your infinite wisdom, that we couldn't do any more memory charms. What do you want me to do, Apparate in and hope they don't notice?"

They both knew there was no alternative, and that was why Schledinger was dragging his gangly legs in the dust, climbing the slight hill. The exorbitant fee Draco paid for his services had ensured both his silence and his cooperation, even to the extent of impersonating a worker for the Perth division of the Water Corporation. It was an unfortunate oversight on Draco's part that there was nothing in their contract stipulating that Schledinger had to pretend to be happy about it.

"Oh, the Water Corporation? I really didn't think we were using that much water. Wendell?" Mrs Granger was ruffled by the suggestion that their water usage was considerably in excess of the norm, and drafted in her husband to weigh in on the matter.

"I guess the sprinklers do use a bit of water, but I'm pretty sure I've only used them on our watering days. I've forgotten about them some days, though…" he said, looking sheepish. Draco stepped in, thankful that he had done his research; otherwise he wouldn't have had a clue what a watering day was.

"Well, Mr- Wilkins, is it?" he said, pretending to inspect his clipboard (Schledinger was stuck resentfully holding the toolbox).

"Yes, Wendell Wilkins."

"Well, it could just be a leak. If you let me and Adrian here in to have a look, she'll be right in no time!" Draco's Australian accent was unlikely to deceive the natives, but the Grangers didn't appear to detect anything amiss.

"Of course, please come in. This way, I believe – we don't really look at the water meter much…" Mrs Granger led the way and they all followed; Schledinger made sure to trail after Mr Granger, casting some surreptitious spells as they moved through the house. Once they reached the utility room at the back, Draco positioned himself to obscure the Grangers' view while keeping them busy talking, so Schledinger could continue while pretending to rummage through his toolbox.

"Well?"

They were alone; Draco had finally stopped lecturing Mr Granger on the importance of turning off his sprinklers. As he wasn't quite sure what a sprinkler was it had been somewhat lacking in detail, but he had made up for it by laying on the guilt.

"I see now what has happened," Schledinger said, as he examined a wrench with a puzzled expression.

"What happened? Can you retrieve the memories?"

"Your Miss Granger," despite his misgivings, Draco had had to tell him how the Grangers had ended up as the Wilkins, "she was mostly clever about sending them away from England to hide. The charms themselves are not so complicated, for those who know what they are doing."

"But can you lift them?" The wrench was starting to look like a better and better tool for getting Schledinger to answer the damned question.

"I can, yes. A better question is if I can restore their memories."

"And can you?"

"Maybe, I do not know yet." Belatedly, Draco recalled that Hermione apparently cared about her parents a great deal, whether they remembered her or not. It would perhaps be wise to leave them in the same condition as he found them, and not as gibbering wrecks.

"And how will it affect them if you lift the charms but can't restore their memories?" he asked.

"A much better question." Schledinger beamed at him as if he was his star pupil. "I will contrive. I will contrive."

Draco couldn't wring anything more reassuring out of him, and had to contend himself with dire thoughts of retribution if it failed and the comfort of knowing that Schledinger was one of the five leading world authorities on Memory Charms. He dwelt less on the fact that Schledinger was the only one of the five willing to undertake a commission he had to swear an Unbreakable Vow to keep secret.

It took Schledinger most of the afternoon to do his work; he had abandoned all pretense and compelled the Grangers to sit down on their couch. He proceeded to mutter to himself in German, prod them with his wand, scribble furious Arithmantic calculations on the hotel notepad he had brought with him, and complain about the heat. Neither of the wizards knew how to turn on the air conditioning, so after the first twenty minutes Draco was sweating in his boiler suit. Once the Polyjuice wore off, they transfigured the material back into their original robes and both men looked somewhat more comfortable.

Draco spent the interminable hours drifting around the house, flicking through books and looking curiously at the computer in the study, not quite daring to switch it on. He rooted through the cupboards in the kitchen and triumphantly bore the bottles of cold water he found in the fridge out into the living room. Despite Schledinger's objections, he pried him away from the Grangers for a few minutes so they could be coaxed to drink as well; they were no use if they passed out from dehydration.

Eventually Draco had ended up in the living room, engrossed despite himself in _A Short History Of Everything_. Schledinger's cough recalled him to the present.

"I believe I have now done everything I can to ensure the desired outcome."

"And now?" Draco's voice was loud in the quiet room.

"Now we see if I have succeeded." He flicked his wand in the suddenly unbearable silence, releasing the Grangers from their unnatural stillness. They both jerked, as if jostled awake by a sudden noise. Draco hastily shrugged down the sleeves of his robes. He had rolled them up to alleviate the heat somewhat, but decided that the first thing the Grangers saw from the wizarding world had better not be the faded Dark Mark on his left arm.

"What?" Mrs Granger looked around with a pinched expression on her face, which hadn't been there when she still was Monica Wilkins. Her husband was grabbing onto her hand, like a man drowning.

"Darling? What's going on?"

"Don't be alarmed. You have just been through a harrowing experience, and it is natural to be disorientated." Schledinger stepped in to reassure them, and Draco could finally admit that he was worth every Knut of his rather exorbitant fees.

"Now please tell me what is your surname?" he commanded.

"Wilkins, of course-" Mr Granger said at the same time as his wife responded with "Granger" They looked at each other, comprehension visibly dawning on Mr Granger's face along with fear.

"I believe this is where you return to the hotel, Herr Schledinger." Draco entered the conversation for the first time. He had no desire to make Schledinger privy to more information than strictly necessary, and it appeared that he had completed his commission. "And may I congratulate you on your achievement?"

After he got rid of Schledinger, who with a quick nod confirmed to Draco that no loose threads remained from his side, it was time to deal with the Grangers. They were huddled together and Draco took care to put his wand aside (while still making sure he could grab it quickly, should he need it), showing his empty hands in the universal gesture of peace.

Hopefully, Hermione never got around to telling them about wandless magic

"I don't mean you any harm," Draco started, hoping they would believe him and that they hadn't noticed his faded Dark Mark before. Mrs Granger's face was still unnaturally rigid, and he was desperately trying to come up with some other way of reassuring them when she blurted out:

"Hermione?" She drew a deep breath and expanded: "Is Hermione- was Hermione killed, since she didn't come back to get us?" Oh, was that it? Draco had to admit it was a logical conclusion under the circumstances.

"No, no, she is alive and well." At least he assumed she was well; the last thing he heard was that she was exposing the shoddy adherence to arrest procedures in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

"Oh, thank God!" she sobbed and hugged Mr Granger, who had closed his eyes and muttered something inaudible at the news.

"Then why isn't she here?" Mrs Granger asked sharply once she had composed herself, looking rather fierce. Ah. Draco would have bet the remainder of his fortune that St. Granger hadn't given them a choice before modifying their memories.

"And who are you?" Mr Granger added, looking at him suspiciously. "I don't recall ever seeing you before."

"I'm a cousin of Ronald Weasley," Draco glibly answered the second question, neatly dodging all the other things he was for the moment. He had better distract them with answering the first question before they asked him why he didn't have red hair. "May I sit down? It's a rather long story."

Draco told them what he had learnt after the war; how Granger, Weasley and Potter had gone looking for Horcruxes, hunted by the Ministry which had been taken over by Voldemort. When he saw the expression on Hermione's mother's face when she found out what happened to Ted Tonks, he realized how high the stakes were. He had to do this right, or he would do more harm than good.

"I don't know what Hermione said to you, but the truth was probably worse than she could imagine." Preferably, they wouldn't ask how he knew that.

"She tried to explain- she was very upset, I remember," Mr Granger said. "It seemed preposterous. She was going to leave school to go off with her friends, and she wouldn't say where…"

"She's- was only seventeen," his wife continued, "and she'd never told us about a _war_ before, only that there was trouble…" Draco could see why Hermione would have kept the truth from her obviously loving parents. They still didn't quite seem to grasp how brutal and short their lives could have been if Hermione hadn't sent them out of the way.

"Over a thousand wizards and witches died in the war, almost one out of every fifty in Britain. That's not counting the Muggles - no one knows how many of you were killed. Thousands, at least. Wea- Ron's father and brother were killed in the final battle." They looked shocked; Draco wondered if he had finally got through to them. They must have met Arthur Weasley, given how close his son had been to Granger all through Hogwarts.

"There was no way Hermione could have protected you if you had stayed in Britain. You would most definitely have been a target." Draco looked grim, the shadows of the war weighing him down.

"Then she should have explained that! It was unforgivable to take our free will from us like that-" Mrs Granger's anger abated in the face of Draco's snarling:

"You have no idea what unforgivable means!" He visibly calmed himself down, donning the impenetrable Malfoy mask again. "What she did, she did out of love. Trust me, she did the best she could."

"So are you saying that she was right to use her magic to make us do what she wanted? You're starting to sound like what she was fighting against, young man," Mr Granger added, the irony quite unintentional.

"Would you have let her do it, if she'd explained that you were facing almost certain death?" They both looked uncertain. "And that you would have been used against her? She would have turned herself in to save you, and then you'd all have died. Very slowly." The Grangers had clearly failed to consider that angle before. Perhaps Hermione had been too much of a Gryffindor to realise, but Draco strongly suspected that she had shown her usual ruthless practicality and grasped the full implications of how her parents could have been used as a weapon against her and Potter.

"It should still have been our decision!" Mrs Granger still had some fire left in her.

"What about the rest of us, then?" Draco asked. Their faces were blank, not comprehending where he was going. "I went to school with all three of them. You should be very clear about this: if Hermione hadn't gone with Harry Potter on the Horcrux hunt, the Dark Lord would be ruling the wizarding world right now. Probably the Muggle one, too."

He left them a moment to ponder that.

"Sometimes, the end has to justify the means, and you can bemoan that as much as you like afterwards. At least there is an afterwards."

Mrs Granger got them some tea and Mr Granger turned on the air conditioning before they continued; they all needed a little time to compose themselves after that.

"What happened then, did they find all the Hor-things?" Mr Ganger asked when they were seated again. Draco found unexpected comfort in his tea; it helped dissolving the chill in his bones that had nothing to do with the sunny Australian day outside.

"Yes, they did. Eventually the Dark Lord realized what they were up to and there was a battle at Hogwarts-"

"At _Hogwarts_?" Mrs Granger broke in, incredulously. "A battle at the _school_?"

"Yes," Draco answered and managed to avoid rolling his eyes; what had he said to give her the impression the Dark Lord was playing by any set of rules except his own? "They managed to evacuate most of the students first, though," he added. "There were heavy casualties on both sides, but Potter did defeat the Dark Lord."

He decided against bringing up the prophecy; it wasn't necessary right now.

"Unfortunately, it turned out that the last Horcrux was in Harry Potter's scar." The clean horror of it struck him again as the significance of what he was saying dawned on the Grangers; they must have known him a little then, the boy with the strange scar and wild black hair.

"But then-" Mr Granger had obviously figured it out, and Draco felt unwilling admiration for his quick inference.

"Yes. For the Dark Lord to be defeated, Potter had to die. He knew that before the battle started and – and made arrangements."

The Grangers knew both Hermione and Ron, and it didn't take much for them to put the pieces together. Mr Granger bolted from the couch and ran out of Draco's sight; he could hear the man retching in another room, out of sight.

Mrs Granger seemed to be made of sterner stuff, but as he was watching her she broke down in thick sobs that seemed to shake her whole body. Draco was at a loss, but somehow his body moved to the couch on its own accord and he found himself patting her back awkwardly. She clung on to him, rather like Hermione might have done when she forgot that he wasn't Weasley or Potter. Draco wished for a brief moment his own mother could have cried like this, just once.

Maybe the Muggles were right and it was healthier to let it all out.

Momentarily, Mr Granger returned, and attended to his wife rather more expertly than Draco. By unspoken agreement, there was another round of tea. They were more subdued this time.

Draco told them, very concisely, of Hermione's trial and banishment, and of Weasley's recent return amongst the living. He would rather they didn't find him in a lie, so he glossed over how he got together with Hermione and their current living arrangements; he had no idea how much she would tell her parents eventually, so for the moment he stuck to the bare bones of the story without elaborating.

"All that time, she was just in London…" Mrs Granger mused. "In the same world as us. We could have checked into her hotel."

"Did she ever consider having someone else er-removing the memory charms?" Mr Granger asked with studied nonchalance. It didn't come naturally to him; Draco could have done better as a five-year-old.

"She was told it wasn't possible. By an expert, someone she trusted." Draco replied in tones that left them no strangers to his opinion about the so-called expert; they may not have caught his implication that Hermione had been deliberately deceived, however. "She came here to check on you after she got her magic back, to make sure you were all right."

"Do you have a photo of her?" Mrs Granger asked suddenly. "We might have seen her, only we didn't recognize her-" Draco produced a relatively recent photo of Hermione that he mysteriously happened to be carrying in his pocket. It must have ended up there when she was missing, in case he had to contact the Aurors.

"Here," he proffered. They were taken by surprise when the picture moved, and their daughter's familiar smile shone back at them. The photo had been taken by Angelina Weasley at some birthday party or other at the Burrow this summer; Hermione was shading her eyes against the sunlight and had freckles on her nose. The Grangers silently traced the contours of her face, and the miniature Hermione patiently submitted to their scrutiny.

"When can we see her?" Mr Granger asked abruptly.

"That depends."

"Depends on what? You can't stop us from seeing our own daughter!" Mrs Granger's voice sounded noticeably shrill.

"Hermione doesn't need you to find fault with what she did in the war. Believe me, she's hard enough on herself as it is." There was no way Draco would let them anywhere near Hermione before they were ready to embrace their long-lost daughter without any recriminations; he hadn't done this to upset her even further. "You don't even know how to find her without me, so I believe I am quite capable of keeping you from seeing her until I deem it appropriate." For good measure, he added: "And you would do well to remember that I figured out how to return you to yourselves, so how about some gratitude?"

The last thing he expected was for Mr Granger to burst out laughing.

"Well, I can see how the two of you would get on like a house on fire!"

That was one way of putting it, Draco thought grimly. Now, all he had to do was to make Hermione agree to be in the same room as him without an audience, once he had come up with a way of reuniting her with her parents that showed him in the best possible light.

Oh, and he would have to figure out how to tell the Grangers which side he had been fighting on in the war, while keeping them convinced them that he was the greatest thing since Gethin Geonor found a way to juice leeches without getting your hands slimy**.  
**


	22. Ch 21- Exercises In Practical Archeology

**Chapter 21 **

**An Exercise In Practical Archaeology**

**-oOo-**

* * *

**6PM, the 19th of November 2006 – 12 Grimmauld Place, London**

Hermione hated being right these days. At school, it hadn't exactly made her popular, but being right about things had kept her friends alive and ensured her good grades. Nowadays, the scant comfort of finding her cynicism justified seemed to be the best reward she could hope for.

Of course the Malfoys hadn't changed; Hermione had known what they were all along, even as they moved to defend her in public at the engagement party. No matter how nice it was to find that somebody else had her back, she should have been telling herself not to become complacent, not to take the Malfoys and their loyalty at face value.

As long as it suited Draco's mysterious ends, he and Narcissa would apparently honour the sham marriage she had entered into and treat Hermione as if she was a pure-blood debutante Draco would have married simply because he wanted to. The illusion was never going to last indefinitely. Looking back, Hermione realised that she had let her constant vigilance slip over the last months, until she almost had convinced herself that Draco was being open with her. Somehow, she had started to believe that they had forged a real friendship, despite all the history between them.

It had been utter folly, and she there was no one else to blame but herself.

Hermione had no desire to drag Ron into the whole mess; she was married to Malfoy for better or worse, and it would hardly be fair to involve Ron when there was nothing he could do anyway. Given the situation with Ginny and George, Ron couldn't even give her a bed for the night.

Hermione cringed at the prospect of letting Fleur, who had a husband who adored her every hair, in on into the real state of her marriage.

Or Percy. It had been bad enough when she married Malfoy; she had no wish to hear Percy pontificate on how prescient his dark warnings been.

There was always Charlie, the only single Weasley living on his own, but if it came out that she was staying with him the press would have a field day. Charlie's company would have been welcome right now; always reassuringly laid back, he would probably be able to take her mind off things with a joke or two, but she couldn't risk it. Luna was away in the Andes and there was no way Hermione was going to explain to Mrs Longbottom why she needed a bed for the night.

All other options exhausted, she found herself sitting in a Muggle hotel room with all her belongings shrunk into a her old book bag.

Late-night TV provided a welcome escape from her thoughts; she had no desire to dwell any further on how stupid she had been. She was acutely aware of that already. Neither did the future hold any enticing prospects; she would have to continue to work with Malfoy, both to honour her promises and because she shared his alarm about the outlook of the wizarding world.

All that would change was that the right to divorce would advance towards the top of her list of reforms to implement, alongside anything else that would particularly annoy Malfoy. On the bright side, it looked like house-elves finally would get a break.

It would be hard to act civil with him in public, but hell, if she had to she would get Muggle acting lessons or something. Hermione refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her struggling, when he doubtlessly would turn up wearing the same smirk as he always did at their next engagement.

For the moment, she managed to ignore almost everything Malfoy had said. Later on, his words would haunt her; a few bottles from the minibar and her internal ranting against him was sufficient to keep them at bay for now. Hermione didn't even have the energy to cry and shout and lash out; she landed on the bed in an exhausted heap and stayed there as if her life depended on it, Summoning a new bottle when the current one ran out.

It was like an itch under her skin refusing to leave her alone, the knowledge that Malfoy would be able to find her here if he wanted to. Naturally, she had warded the room, but he could be waiting outside when she stuck her head out in the morning. There was no earthly reason why he would want to, but Malfoy would know that she would know that he could track her down anywhere, and in Hermione's overwrought state that was intolerable.

She fell asleep to Columbo, which carried vaguely soothing memories of her father and stumbling out of bed late at night as a child. The pale morning light woke her up with a jolt. For once, there had been no nightmares; instead, she could vaguely remember exotic shapes and a jungle somewhere.

The answer to her current predicament had come to her as she hung somewhere between dreams and wakefulness: she would go to Grimmauld Place. It was still under the Fidelius charm (the only reason why it hadn't been turned into a Harry Potter museum complete with school trips from Hogwarts being guided around the place, she thought surly), so Malfoy wouldn't be able to get in even if he was able to find her there.

He was welcome to loiter in the square outside waiting for her to appear; she hoped it would give him pneumonia.

* * *

In her initial enthusiasm, Hermione failed to consider that Grimmauld Place had been deserted for a decade and that the last residents probably had been Harry, Ron and herself, before they broke into the Ministry on the Horcrux hunt.

She moved through the house like a ghost; at first to avoid setting off the inevitable wailing from Mrs Black, then in a silent mixture of grief and wonder. Malfoy's accusations had already jolted her precarious balance, not to mention that she had been abducted and almost killed the day before that. Seeing Grimmauld Place again was too much, too soon, and Hermione was catapulted back to a past where her idea of how bad things could possibly get seemed quite naive in retrospect.

Hermione hadn't bothered packing their summer coats in her beaded bag before they went to the Ministry. Hanging innocently in the hall, they seemed to ambush her with their wrinkly collars and attendant memories of evening walks at the Burrow. Abandoned in the drawing room, her English dictionary caught her unawares as she came upon it. It had been a gift from her parents, before she even had received her Hogwarts letter. She opened it to caress the familiar inscription, '_To our Hermione with love'_, before softly closing it again.

The messy piles of books, Quidditch magazines and notes left in the bedroom Ron and Harry had shared made her snort despite herself, before she spotted a stray pair of clean socks on the bottom of the open wardrobe. She remembered Dobby giving them to Harry. He had hung onto them for as long as he had been able to, despite their almost comical ugliness. Harry would never have disdained a gift given with as much love as Dobby's had been, no matter how garish it was.

The sight of the socks, alone and forgotten, was almost enough to tear her heart out of her chest.

* * *

Hermione woke up as the sun was setting, finding herself curled into a ball on Harry's old bed.

Doing a cursory inspection of the remainder of the house required considerable courage. Thankfully, she was too emotionally exhausted to do anything other than staring blankly at the traces of their stay when she came across them. No one appeared to have stayed in the house since the three of them, although she was pretty certain that it must have been searched by the remainders of the Order after the war.

Eventually she ended up in the kitchen, clutching a cup of surprisingly fragrant tea discovered in a cupboard over the sink and debating what to do. Despite her misgivings she decided to stay; surely the worst must be over now that she had been through most of the house, and she didn't have anywhere else to go. The Ministry wouldn't be able to track her down here, so if she was very careful no one would find out that she was no longer living with the Malfoys.

With her decision made, Hermione set out her notebooks and the reference books on the table in the library on the ground floor. It had always been her domain. While she was working, she could almost imagine that Harry and Ron were out on surveillance at the entrance to the Ministry or rummaging through Regulus Black's bedroom again.

When a familiar crack announced that someone had Apparated within the house she almost fell off her chair. Wand held high, she crept out to the hall, astonished that the portrait of Mrs Black hadn't yet erupted.

"Mistress Malfoy!" a beaming Kreacher greeted her. Hermione almost turned to look behind her to see if Narcissa had sneaked in somehow. "It is an honour for Kreacher to serve Mistress again, and now that she is married so well too!"

Hermione smiled weakly. She should have realised that one member of the wizarding world would greet the news of her marriage with unmitigated delight. Ever since Kreacher had changed his opinion of Harry and his friends, he had treated Hermione as someone who unfortunately was inferior by birth, but who could hope to overcome it by good works and determination. Apparently, a pure-blood husband was sufficient to achieve the same result.

"It's good to see you, Kreacher," she offered tentatively, forgetting the inevitable consequence of speaking above a whisper in the hall.

"MUDBLOOD USURPER! NOW SHE HAS INFILTRATED THE MALFOYS TOO, THE WHORE-" Mrs Black wailed at the top of her voice, and Kreacher and Hermione hurriedly escaped to the kitchen.

There, she learnt that Kreacher had been working at Hogwarts since the war, but that he popped over to Grimmauld Place ever so often to look after the house. He wouldn't say how, but he had been aware of the ownership of the house passing to her, and since Hermione's return to the wizarding world he had patiently been waiting for her to return. She felt slightly ashamed for forgetting about him so completely; some house-elf campaigner she was.

Without hesitation, Kreacher agreed to keep it secret that Hermione was staying at Grimmauld Place and assured her that he could excuse himself from Hogwarts without arousing suspicions. Hermione had learnt something about house-elves since she was fifteen, and she knew better than bringing up any prospect of setting him free. She would remember, though, and she promised herself to take better care of Kreacher in the future.

Kreacher's presence eased the loneliness of returning to Grimmauld Place without her friends, and he managed to distract her from Malfoy's perfidy a little. He bustled around, cleaning as he went, having rebuffed her offers to help, and Hermione returned to her work. She even regained enough equanimity to send a short note to Malfoy to remind him that they were due at a benefit the following night; he would no doubt shirk his duties if she didn't hold him to account.

Compared to his other deficiencies, his irresponsibility was probably his most attractive personality trait, she thought bitterly when signing the note with an angry flourish.

* * *

Staying at Grimmauld Place was disconcertingly like being back in her old life. Hermione had had enough of solitude for a lifetime; she wondered if that was why she had been so vulnerable to Malfoy's machinations. Only Kreacher's presence seemed to lend some semblance of life to the place, and Hermione finally understood how Sirius could have been so affected by being holed up in the house of his ancestors.

It did get better; as soon as she had told him where she was, Ron would visit every few days too, which was a tremendous improvement. His reunion with Kreacher was heartbreaking to watch; tears were shed and a long-awaited steak and kidney pie was served up.

Hermione couldn't stop second-guessing herself. It was like a scab; she picked and picked at it, but it only got worse. Had Narcissa known that Draco had cast the blood wards on her? Had the tentative understanding they had established during the last few months all been an act? How in the name of God could Hermione have let herself be won over by Malfoy, when she had known all the time that she couldn't trust him?

She was a firm believer in learning from her mistakes, but this was so bad it was actually embarrassing.

For weeks, Hermione managed to keep the words Draco had thrown at her at bay, but eventually they came flying back at her, as if they had been nesting in the nooks and crannies of Grimmauld Place biding their time. The jab about her parents hurt the most, because it was far too accurate. The look on her father's face as she had raised her wand to alter his memories had not been fear but shame, as if he had been revolted by what he had brought into the world.

Seeing her parents in Australia - stopping in for a cup of tea at their local café and chatting with the shop assistant at the gardening centre, while pretending that they were complete strangers - had been one of the most difficult things Hermione had ever done. It had taken all her recently acquired Occlumency skills to calm down sufficiently to stroll in front of the table where they had been sitting, to be absolutely certain that they didn't remember her.

They hadn't batted an eyelid, and she had forced herself to walk away slowly despite her haste to get as far away from the garden centre as possible. Her parents were alive, and she would have to contend herself with that. Hermione would do it all again if she had to, even if she knew from the start that they never could get their memories back. And wasn't that exactly what Draco had accused her of – thinking that she knew best, regardless of the fallout?

Just as she had predicted, Malfoy had been entirely unaffected by their recent altercation at the benefit. With considerable effort, Hermione had managed to match him smirk for smirk.

Every time she saw him, the familiar sight of his pale hair and immaculately cut robes made her heart lift a little, before she chastised herself for her stupidity again. Keeping their interactions strictly focused on business helped, but it also made her realise how much she missed their previous almost-friendly banter.

Malfoy had really been the first friend (false friend, she reminded herself) Hermione had been able to share her intellectual pursuits with, and she had honestly enjoyed planning and plotting and arguing with him. Verbal sparring with Draco had been completely different from anything she was used to: he had kept her on her toes, challenging her at every step.

It had been exhilarating, and now it was gone.

* * *

It was the day before Christmas Eve and Hermione was putting on her dress robes under duress.

Before the war, the Malfoys had always hosted a Christmas gathering for the closest two hundred or so of their friends. This year Narcissa had deemed it possible to revive the tradition, albeit at a smaller scale. It would be the first time Hermione saw her mother-in-law since leaving Draco behind in the previously immaculate drawing room at the Dower House, and she wasn't looking forward to it.

When Hermione arrived at the Dower House through the Floo, it was immediately obvious that the room had been returned to its pristine state. The inclement weather had dissuaded her from Apparating; snow had been hanging in the air in London and in Wiltshire it was already falling in heavy, angry flakes.

"Hermione! What a pleasure to see you, darling." Narcissa approached her with outstretched arms, reminiscent of her first visit to the house. Hermione admonished herself to keep smiling and remember that it was all an act, now as it had been then.

"Narcissa! It's good to see you too." It really was, despite Hermione's best efforts, but she did her best to quench her unwelcome enthusiasm.

"Please sit down for a minute - would you like a cup of tea? A glass of mulled wine, perhaps?"

Two steaming glasses were brought to them by a familiar set of gnarly hands. Miffy was also delighted to see Hermione, who couldn't help noticing the complete absence of any signs that more guests were expected. The drawing room was lavishly decorated with Christmas angels flying between bunches of pine needles and dark red roses, a Christmas tree reaching the ceiling - seemingly teeming with wildlife that decorously stayed put - and a wonderful scent of cinnamon and exotic spices.

However, only two covers were laid on the table where they were sitting. Unless dragging Hermione there, hours before the guests were due to arrive, was Malfoy's idea of a joke this was decidedly odd. Narcissa looked nervous, which was also very odd indeed.

"I'm afraid I have brought you here under false pretences, my dear," she commenced. Hermione surreptitiously made sure to have her wand at the ready; Narcissa must have spotted the slight movement of her sleeve, but didn't comment on it. "There will be no party tonight - it was just an excuse to get you to come here. Draco is out. He doesn't know about this at all, so I fear it's all my fault," she added with a wry smile. Now Hermione was curious; she raised her eyebrows and leaned forwards slightly, encouraging Narcissa to continue. She could always storm out later.

"I would like you to know that I have no part in whatever is going on between you and my son. He has told me very little, but as far as I am concerned you are my daughter-in-law. I will treat you the same as I would have if he had married – oh, Pansy Parkinson, for all I know."

Hermione had no need for elegant little gestures to convey her disbelief of that declaration; it was written large across her face.

"I'm quite serious, my dear. Draco made his choice, so you're one of us now whether you like it or not." Narcissa looked wistful for a second. "Remember I'm not a Malfoy, either."

No, you're not, Hermione thought, and right now I'm living in your family's house which you mustn't have seen for the last thirty years. This life never ceased to amaze her.

"That's very generous of you, Narcissa," she managed, rather proud of her sincere tone.

"Of course you don't believe me," Narcissa continued as if Hermione hadn't spoken, "so I am willing to swear an Unbreakable Vow that I am telling you the truth."

Hermione gaped; she had not expected this. After the initial shock, common sense swiftly returned.

"I think this family has seen quite enough of Unbreakable Vows," she said dryly, but with some chagrin. It would have been nice to be able to trust Narcissa.

"I think you're right, my dear," Narcissa said, unabashed. "That's why I purchased some Veritaserum from Slug & Jiggers yesterday, after I ah-procured the necessary paperwork from the Ministry."

She produced the small bottle, along with a certificate from the Ministry that she was authorised to use it. Hermione inspected the vial; it had the familiar, unbroken seal from Slug & Jiggers indicating that it hadn't been tampered with. She remembered from Potions that antidotes had to be consumed within half an hour before exposure to Veritaserum to be effective. Narcissa appeared to have done her research as well, as she filled the next twenty five minutes with gossip about their mutual acquaintances before she motioned to Hermione to dispense the dose.

After swallowing the three drops meted out, Narcissa graciously motioned to her to start.

Hermione didn't want to be too invasive, but if she couldn't extract the information she needed the whole exercise would be pointless. First, she decided to test the potion and set Narcissa at ease; she was also rather curious about Narcissa's Black heritage, now that she was living at Grimmauld Place.

"What is the name of the Black house-elf?"

"Kreacher," Narcissa said.

"And his mother's name?"

"Olga." Narcissa seemed surprised that she remembered it; Hermione, who had seen the stuffed head on the first floor landing that very morning, wasn't. It was gruesome, even if you were a Black.

Right, there was no point in dallying.

"What did you make Severus Snape swear at his house at Spinner's End?" Hermione asked, direct as ever. Narcissa looked shocked that Hermione knew about that, but she hadn't been able to think of anything else to use to test if the potion worked. She knew the interlude at Snape's house hadn't become public knowledge after the war; if the prosecutors would have been able to show the Wizengamot that Narcissa had been involved in plotting the killing of Dumbledore, the sentence handed out would have been much harsher.

"That he would watch over Draco, protect him and, if he failed, he would perform the deed himself," Narcissa whispered in response. It was only then Hermione realised that the memory of Narcissa's confession was a bargaining chip in itself; and so the tangled web spun by Snape and Bellatrix and Narcissa Malfoy was continued by an unlikely weaver. There was no time to consider that now, however.

"Did you know that Ma- Draco had put blood wards on me?"

"No." Narcissa looked relieved, and so did Hermione.

"Do you know why he married me?" she couldn't resist asking.

"He told me it was part of his plan to restore the family. He said- He said he might be able to get them to release Lucius, if he married you. But I don't know if that's the whole truth," Narcissa said, flustered now. Hermione decided that she didn't really need to know more, but asked one final question just to be sure:

"Are you involved in anything that could be conceived as a conspiracy against me?" Narcissa blushed, and blurted out:

"I went to Ronald Weasley and made him tell me why Draco and you had fought, and why you wouldn't come back." Hermione groaned inwardly; would Ron ever learn to keep his big mouth shut? "Then I decided I had to persuade you to come back here-"

"Thank you, that's fine. I don't need to know the rest. Is there anything else, other than that, that would be relevant?"

"No."

"Let me-" Hermione looked around the room until she spotted _Witch Weekly_ and the last few issues of the _Daily Prophet_, "Let's just read until the Veritaserum wears off." Narcissa nodded and they sat in companionable silence until the forty-five minutes carefully annotated on the bottle had expired.

"Please ask me what my name is," Narcissa requested politely.

"What's your name?"

"Ludivinia Smith," she responded promptly, with a sigh of relief. Hermione finally allowed herself to smile back properly at her.

"Thank you. That was a very brave and generous thing to do," she said with real gratitude, and not a little wonder. She would never have expected Narcissa to go to these lengths for her; she had underestimated her significantly.

"I knew you wouldn't abuse it," Narcissa confided. "You really are a nice girl at heart. We haven't had any of those among the Malfoys for quite a few generations, so I think it is about time. It is fortunate that you can be rather forceful too, so you can hold your own against my son." If it bothered her that Hermione ignored the reference to Draco, she was much too well bred to betray it.

When Hermione Floo'd back to Grimmauld Place something seemed to have changed; the ceilings were not weighing her down with quite the same force as before.

-oOo-


	23. Chapter 22 - Dulce Et Decorum Est

**Many thanks to orlando switch for making some excellent points about the last chapter and for generously contributing ideas for improving it.**** As always, thanks also to MysticDew for being a supreme beta. **  


* * *

**Chapter 22**

**Dulce Et Decorum Est **

**-oOo-**

* * *

**2PM, the 1st of April 2007 - 207 Forrest Street, Palmyra, Western Australia**

"But what does she _do_?" Mrs Granger asked Draco, after establishing that no discernible professional career was present in Hermione's life at the moment. Draco's family had a rather different outlook on such things, but he was sufficiently acquainted with the Granger fixation on the importance of having a proper job to tell Mrs Granger what she wanted to know.

Hermione wrote, lobbied, campaigned and acted as an advocate for little or no pay to those who needed her help to obtain what she classified as basic rights from the Ministry. She also worked as a consultant for Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes for exorbitant compensation, creating gadgets like meeting planners (a variation on the homework planners Potter and Weasley so singularly had failed to appreciate), a Detecting Charm designed to be attached to keys and other items easily lost by wizards who didn't bother keeping their wands with them all the time, and business cards adapted for a wizarding audience with extras like the scent of lavender for the launderette in Diagon Alley or showing the latest special offer at the Hogsmeade apothecary. They all brought in a surprising amount of revenue.

According to Ron, George occasionally regretted agreeing to give Hermione a rather substantial percentage from the start, even if it had been in exchange for not ever having to talk to her again.

Draco came back to see the Grangers the day after their memories had been restored. He hadn't needed to put any elaborate scheme into place to wangle an invitation to return; it was evident even to the Grangers that they only had been told the barest minimum of the story behind their exile. So far Draco had managed to avoid disclosing his name, even when Mrs Granger had asked him directly, only saying that it was a story for another day.

Well, now it had arrived. Immeasurably relieved at not having to go through the Muggle charade again, Draco Apparated straight into the Grangers' linen closet. Fortunately he had remembered to advise them of his intention to do so the previous day, so they should be unfazed by his sudden reappearance in their midst.

Yet, when he saw them they bore the bewildered air of people not entirely convinced that it all really had happened. Other wizards, more familiar with dealing with unsuspecting Muggle relatives who suddenly found out that magic did in fact exist, would have recognised their expressions instantly. Draco did, too, but he derived his knowledge from having lived through a war; he was intimately familiar with the feeling that the world you thought you knew had suddenly collapsed around you.

"Do come into the kitchen. We're just having some breakfast - you'll have a cup of tea, at least," Mr Granger offered, polite despite the circumstances; he had been dispatched to retrieve Draco, whose arrival had been announced by a soft pop followed by muffled cursing as he knocked over the ironing board. Draco managed to sneak a glance in the mirror as he was passing through the hall and was relieved to note that he looked as unruffled as ever despite his mishap.

Together, Draco and Mr Granger made their way to the bright kitchen, where Mrs Granger was frying sausages and eggs. Once the thoroughly English fry-up was but a memory Draco put his cup down with a little more noise than necessary, as if to announce that the pleasantries were over.

Quite understandably, the Grangers were mostly interested in their daughter; they didn't know that they had any reason to be particularly interested in Draco yet. He told them about Hermione's endeavours, and Mrs Granger politely asked him about his own.

"What do you do yourself, Mr-" She frowned. "You never did tell us your name, did you?"

"No, I didn't."

"Well, is there a reason for that?" she persisted, trying to remember what he had said yesterday. "Are you a Weasley, then?"

"No!" Draco put a little too much emphasis on the word, and had to explain himself. "We're only distantly related. In fact, there's a bit of a rift between our families." That was a slight understatement; before Romeo and Juliet made their appearance, the Montagues and Capulets probably had been on more cordial terms than the Weasleys and the Malfoys had managed over the last century. "Before I tell you who I am, may I please ask you to remember that I'm the man who restored your memories and who will reunite you with your daughter?"

The Grangers looked at each other, in one of those silent conversations that the long-married seem to have down to perfection. Mr Granger nodded slightly in agreement, and Mrs Granger said:

"Very well. We will."

Draco's younger self would have found it absurd that he would be so anxious to remain in the good graces of two Muggles; now, caution made him weigh his words carefully before he started to speak.

"My background is rather different to Ron Weasley's. It's true that we're distant cousins, but our families have had radically different- political views, you could say, for centuries." Mrs Granger seemed to have recalled what made the Weasleys remarkable among wizards and pursed her lips in anticipation of what Draco would reveal. He had to help Mr Granger on the way, however. "My family's views on Muggle-borns were not as welcoming as the Weasleys'."

The Knut had definitely dropped now. Still, they allowed him to go on without interrupting. Draco made sure to look straight at them before he continued.

"I say this not to excuse my own behaviour, but to explain the environment I grew up in. For as long as I can remember, I was taught that Muggle-borns were inferior, unworthy of belonging to my world, and that Muggles were beneath my notice. As wizards, we had to defend what was ours from Muggle-borns, who didn't respect our customs and were threatening to usurp the wizarding world."

The words didn't seem to belong there, in the pine kitchen with souvenir magnets from America on the door of the fridge and birds chirping merrily in the garden.

"Hermione came as a bit of a surprise, as I'm sure you can imagine." He smiled wryly, and Mr Granger half-smiled in response. His wife refused to mellow until she heard where this was going. "She put everyone to shame, including me. I was constantly told that I should be putting her in her place, but no matter what I did it never seemed to be enough." He remembered the futility in trying to please his father, always failing miserably as Potter and Granger garnered all the praise and attention that ought have been Draco's.

"Unfortunately, I resorted to bullying when I couldn't beat her academically. I'm afraid I did whatever I could to hurt her and her friends." Now probably wasn't the best time to add that Potter had been his arch-nemesis all through their years at Hogwarts, before Potter went after worthier prey that the snivelling fool Draco had been then.

"You're Draco Mall- what's-it's-name, aren't you?" Mr Granger said slowly, as if the name was coming back to him as he was talking, taking the other two by surprise.

"Malfoy," Draco filled in, at the same time as Mrs Granger questioningly turned to her spouse.

"I don't remember Hermione mentioning any- any bullying! Not like that…" she trailed off, looking askance at Draco as if he was exaggerating.

Mr Granger sighed.

"She made me promise not to tell you. When she was home for Christmas in second year, some TV program or other set her off. I happened to come into the lounge just then, and I wouldn't let it go until she told me what she was crying about." His eyes were far away, as if he was remembering a little girl who was only just finding out that not all problems can be solved by telling the grown-ups. "It turned out that there was a boy at school who wouldn't leave her alone, who happened to look exactly like some character in the film she'd been watching. She said he was from a pure wizarding family, and he was calling her ugly names…"

Draco winced.

"Yes, that was me. I did more than that, eventually," he admitted, noticing that the Mrs Granger was looking at him with disapproval, her face unyielding and stern. If this was her reaction to what had happened when they were children, it didn't bode well for the rest of his tale.

"I told Hermione to stand up for herself, that someone like that wasn't worth listening to," Mr Granger continued, and Draco snorted.

"She did, she slapped me right in the face in fifth year!"

For a moment Mrs Granger looked amused, despite herself.

"Well, did you deserve it?" she asked archly.

"Probably. I can't even remember what I was saying when she did it." Draco looked down at his hands for a moment. In the sunlight, the ruby set in the heavy Malfoy signet ring gleamed the deep red of dragon blood. Next to it, his wedding ring looked self-contained and understated; it was a plain gold band, exactly like Mr Granger's. Draco's hands were paler, untouched by the sun, while Mr Granger clearly had been spending quite some time outside during the Australian summer. They were both callused; Draco's hands from broom-riding and wand-waving, Mr Granger's from gardening or playing squash (Draco had glimpsed a racket in the umbrella stand yesterday).

The two sets of hands looked remarkably alike; long fingers stretching out from firm, square palms.

Draco found himself at a loss how to explain how he once found it so easy to believe that they were fundamentally different; that Muggles somehow loved and lived and died differently from wizards. A very small number of Death Eater raids had sufficed to show that Mudblood was remarkably similar to pure-blood once it was spilt, and that he found no pleasure in either being shed. At the time, Draco had interpreted it as yet another sign of his own weakness, but later he wondered if he had started suspecting that he had been fed lies even then.

It had slowly become clear to Draco that he abhorred violence, despite everything in his upbringing predisposing him to the contrary. The sheer horror of what he saw being done to them finally made Lucius Malfoy's son see that Muggles were human beings too. He would probably never be as comfortable in the Muggle world as Hermione, or even Weasley. It was too alien to him, even if he could carry himself off passably without attracting undue attention these days. It hardly mattered; he no longer believed that Muggles and wizards were fundamentally different, other than in magical ability.

He had dwelt too long on his thoughts; the Grangers were waiting for him to continue.

"I was young, and foolish, and wanted to prove myself. I _believed_," he sneered with the bitterness of somebody twice his age, "that the world would be a better place if it was run by Voldemort." Draco had been disabused of that particular notion rather quickly. "So I took the Dark Mark and joined the Death Eaters, alongside my father and aunt."

It was so quiet in the room that they all could hear a solitary car pulling away in the street below.

"What age were you?" Mrs Granger asked, with an odd expression on her face.

"Sixteen. It was just before our sixth year." Draco shuddered at the memory, and belatedly thought to show them the shadow of Voldemort on his left arm. He would rather they found out about it now than having to go through it later and bring all the memories back again.

"Here. This is the Dark Mark that his followers were branded with."

The Grangers stared at the skull with the protruding snake outlined in faint grey on his arm; it had never gone away completely, and stopped fading years ago. Hiding it with a glamour didn't make Draco feel any different; most people he encountered who knew what the Dark Mark was knew it was there anyway, and to Muggles it was just a pale, odd tattoo.

"'_Dulce et decorum est'_," Mr Granger mumbled to himself, thinking of other young men who had gone to war to find visions of glory paled in the face of mindless slaughter. His own grandfather had fought in the Great War that was to end all wars, but it had never been spoken of afterwards. After his death, they found the instructions for his funeral carefully set out in a worn notebook. He had asked to have the poem 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' read out at the funeral service, and his grandson still remembered the harsh words lamenting what had been lost in Flanders Fields. For the first time, Alan Granger wondered how the war his daughter had lived through would affect her contemporaries. It hadn't been fought in distant trenches, where boys went to return as taciturn men with shadows in their eyes; it had raged all over Britain and nowhere and no one had been safe, if Draco was to be believed.

Mrs Granger caught the significance of the reference to the Muggle poem, and asked Draco with unexpected mildness:

"What happened after you had joined?"

Draco was staring in front of him, seeing something far beyond the neat rows of Derbyshire plates stacked in the cupboard before him.

"My father was in disgrace. He was in charge of the Death Eaters at the Department of Mysteries, and his failure to get to the prophecy ahead of Potter disappointed the Dark Lord. To punish him, I was given an assignment I wasn't expected to be able to complete." Draco assumed that they knew about the skirmish; hadn't Hermione been injured in it?

"What sort of assignment would you give a sixteen-year-old?" Mrs Granger asked, apparently trying hard to withhold judgement.

Draco pulled up the right corner of his mouth in a sardonic grimace that would have been fitting on his father's face. It still rankled that he really had believed that the Dark Lord wanted to honour him rather than setting him up for certain failure, and gone on believing it for far too many weeks. He had brushed off his mother's concerns, delighting in the congratulations he received from his father. He had been a complete fool. Afterwards, Draco had sworn not to let himself be blinded by lies ever again, however well they fit what he wanted to believe.

"To kill the Headmaster of Hogwarts," he answered curtly.

"Wait a second, you mean Dumbledore? You were to _murder_ him? Kill _Dumbledore_?" Mrs Granger clearly found this hard to believe.

"Yes. Or the Dark Lord would have killed us all." And his aunt would have watched, and she wouldn't have lifted one little finger to help them.

Concern was written large on the Grangers' faces, although the danger evidently had passed long ago.

"But what did you do?" Mrs Granger asked, still in the same tone of disbelief. The clean, clear day outside; the very Muggle décor in the kitchen; even the Grangers themselves and their prosaic appearance made even that longest of years seem incredible. They would be here all night if he told them everything and Draco didn't exactly relish sharing every sordid detail, so he abbreviated wildly.

"I tried, but in the end I couldn't bring myself to kill him. Snape did it instead, and he managed to shield my family from the Dark Lord's anger afterwards."

Well, he had kept them alive. Seeing Snape accomplish what had seemed impossible had been the final catalyst for Draco to acknowledge that he had been more of a father for him than Lucius ever had been. Much later, seeing Snape and Dumbledore sacrificing themselves to save his tattered innocence in Snape's memories had been one of the biggest shocks of his life.

"We were still in disgrace, but at least we were mostly kept away from the war." Draco had to pick his words carefully as he came to the inglorious role the Malfoys had played in the later stages of the war, and wrestled with whether he should tell the Grangers about the torture Hermione had suffered at their hands.

Eventually, he decided somewhat recklessly to disclose it; it would only get worse if it came out later, and Merlin knew he needed them on his side.

"I did encounter Hermione again before the end of the war," he admitted. "She was captured with Ron Weasley and Potter, and brought to Malfoy Manor. My family's residence," he clarified, "where the Dark Lord also was staying at the time." Hermione's parents looked aghast, even though this was some nine years ago.

"You must understand that the Dark Lord was scouring Britain to find Harry Potter. Delivering him would mean everything to my family: restitution, a seat at the table in the new order…" Draco's face took on a pinched expression as he tried to reconcile that sullen boy, sick to his back teeth of bloodshed but still loyal to his family, with who he was now. "I was home for the school holidays, and I told them that it was Hermione they had caught. Potter was disguised, but it wasn't difficult to figure out that it must be him with her."

Draco had done so many things in his short career as a Death Eater; confirming Granger's identity had seemed like a small thing at the time, and he genuinely hadn't been able to see any other way out. He had hardly expected to find himself explaining his actions to her parents one day.

"My father would have alerted the Dark Lord that Potter was there, if my aunt hadn't intervened. Do you remember I said that my aunt was a Death Eater too?" The Grangers nodded, their faces fittingly grim. Mrs Weasley dispatching his aunt to kingdom come had been sufficient for Draco to award her an Order of Merlin, First Class had it been in his power, but even when Bellatrix was blissfully dead he didn't like dredging up her memory.

"She was there too. She found something in Potter's possession that should have been in her bank vault. If the security of the vault had been breached, the Dark Lord would have killed us all, very slowly." Draco looked down on his hands, remembering when all choices before him led to nasty, brutish and short outcomes. "So my aunt tortured Hermione to find out where it came from. Fortunately, Potter and Weasley managed to escape and brought Hermione with them," he said in a rush, wanting them to know that at least the torture had ended; as if they would have thought Hermione still was being held at Malfoy Manor otherwise.

"What did your aunt do to my daughter?" Mrs Granger's face was as fierce as any Valkyrie's, and Draco faltered. He still had nightmares about Hermione twisting uselessly in agony on the floor in his drawing room. He still had nightmares about a lot of things.

"My aunt used a curse on her that brings excruciating pain. It's one of the Unforgivable Curse - using it normally means a life sentence in prison." Draco couldn't stop himself from shuddering at the memory of pain filling every muscle, every bone, in your body far beyond the point when you thought you would go insane. Worrying about the after-effects, wondering if this time had pushed you over the edge, had been almost as bad. Under the Cruciatus, insanity would have been a welcome respite; afterwards, when the torment was gone, the prospect of being lost in the grip of the curse forever was harder to bear.

"Hermione was only exposed to it once, as far as I know," he said, with a somewhat shaky voice. "It would have been unbearable agony at the time, but she doesn't have any permanent injuries."

Except the nightmares.

Once, just after Hermione had moved to the Dower House, she had forgotten to set silencing spells on her bedroom. Draco had been woken up by the muffled screams, grasping frantically for his wand. It was only when he was outside her door and realised that Hermione must be dreaming that his heart started to beat at normal speed again. Silently, he put the spells on her room from the outside. He didn't think she would have appreciated him hearing her screaming for Potter and Weasley, and her room had been carefully warded against intruders so there was nothing he could have done for her. Even so, he had lingered outside her door before eventually creeping back to bed.

The Grangers looked at each other.

"Were you also, er- cursed?" Mr Granger gently asked, fumbling around the unfamiliar words.

"With the Cruciatus? A few times," Draco confirmed unwillingly. There was a very good reason he preferred not to talk about these things; they made him much too easy to read to any observers, and he cursed his own stupidity for putting himself in a position where he had to talk about the war.

"And are you suffering from any after-effects?" Mrs Granger asked.

"No," he answered curtly, hoping she would just leave the subject alone. It was none of her business, anyway.

It was the innocuous-looking Mr Granger, however, who fixed Draco with his owlish stare and asked the next question. He seemed to have kept it back until his subject was sufficiently discomfited.

"Why did you come here to restore our memories? According to what you were telling us yesterday, the rest of your world seemed to have concluded that it wasn't possible. So what made you hire that Schrodinger fellow?"

Draco had been expecting this particular question, even if he had failed to anticipate that he would be telling a couple of Muggles more about his experiences in the war than he had told his friends. Well, friend.

"I have a business arrangement with Hermione. A partnership, if you will." He knew exactly what he would say next; Draco had planned this part of the conversation with the same relentlessness and attention to detail Hermione had brought to bear when writing her Hogwarts essays.

"When we set it up, we hadn't spoken since the war. There was something I could do for her and she could help me in her turn, so I approached her with a deal. It was a trade. I wasn't doing her any favours without something in return and I didn't really leave her with much of a choice, but at least I was honest with her. However, just after that I foolishly did something behind her back that affected her, and she found out about it recently."

Nothing changed about Draco's demeanour as he went on, but something in his eyes gave him away to the Grangers.

"Now she won't have anything to do with me, and I'm anxious to repair our relationship. I was at fault, and I want to make up for it," he admitted. The worst hurdle negotiated, Draco found it somewhat easier to continue. "It was merely by chance that I realised that you hadn't been examined by an independent expert. I figured it would be worth getting a second opinion."

"And here we are," Mr Granger said quietly.

-oOo-

* * *

"If we were given the choice again, I'm not sure we'd let her go to Hogwarts," Mr Granger told Draco. They were sitting in the garden after the sun had gone down, listening to the chirping and cricketing and chirruping insects turning the darkness into a busy world of their own, where humans were only visitors. "You were taught by Professor McGonagall too, I imagine?"

Draco nodded, before realising that the older man couldn't see him.

"Yes."

"She turned up on our doorstep one day in June, in some tartan confection. It never even occurred to me that it could be a joke. She didn't seem the type." Draco snorted; the old termagant most definitely hadn't been given to practical jokes. "Afterwards I realised she must have had a lot of practice. She started to speak about gifted children and a special school, and then she went on to talk about magic."

Mr Granger stared out into the bushes surrounding their house.

"We'd noticed things, of course, but we told ourselves we'd imagined them…" He laughed, a short barking sound that ceased as suddenly as it had started. "We're both trained scientists, you see. It would never have occurred to us that there was anything supernatural about our daughter." Draco ached to correct him that there was nothing supernatural about magic, that it was as natural as the air they breathed, but wisely held his tongue. "After Professor McGonagall left, Helen and I couldn't quite decide whether all three of us had been hallucinating or not. It wasn't until McGonagall came back that we realised we had to make a decision, and then Hermione had made up her mind already."

Mr Granger scraped off the last remnants on the label on his beer bottle, and neatly stuffed them into the neck of the bottle.

"Of course, Voldemort wasn't mentioned in our short introduction to the wizarding world. It was all about the marvellous opportunities Hermione would have. If we'd known everything she'd have to face then, I don't know if we'd have put her on that train."

Draco knew from his research that a small number of wizards (usually, but not necessarily Muggle-born) never came to Hogwarts, and subsequently seemed to stay away from the wizarding world completely. Hermione had managed to track some pure-blood wizards that had dropped off the face of the wizarding world and turned Muggle, but they were the exception. It was extremely difficult to get an idea of the number of wizards concerned without access to the archives at Hogwarts and the ledgers recording all magical births on the British Isles.

Draco had never really appreciated how daunting it must be for Muggle parents to dispatch their children to a place they couldn't even see. Afterwards, he didn't know what made him ask.

"And what if you really had known everything? Would you have let her go then, if you'd have known where it would lead?"

Mr Granger was silent for a very long time.

"I don't know," he sighed. "I don't know. It seems very egotistical, doesn't it? Wanting to save your own daughter at the expense of so many lives. But then again- You'll understand when you have children yourself. You want to protect them from the world, but find that you're utterly powerless."

Draco twisted his mouth in a bitter half-smile. It was probably unwise to inform Mr Granger that his chances of having any grandchildren were slim to nonexistent. He couldn't see too well in the dark and believed his lapse had gone undetected, but the few bits of him that were visible were subject to close scrutiny from the older man.

So that was the way the wind was blowing, then. They would see about that. In Mr Granger's experience very few things were immune to change, and most of the things he had imagined were immutable at twenty-six had changed utterly by the time he turned forty-seven.

-oOo-

* * *

**The chapter title is from Wilfred Owen's poem by the same name and refers to the first part of a Latin quote about it being sweet and proper to die for your country. Owen, who fought in the trenches in the First World War, did not agree. The poem 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' was also written by Owen, to those who 'died as cattle' in the war.  
**


	24. Chapter 23 - The End Of The World

**Thanks to MysticDew for being a great beta! **

* * *

**Chapter 23**

**The End Of The World**

**-oOo-**

* * *

**4PM, the 6****th**** of February 2007 - Trevaunance Road, St. Agnes, Cornwall**

Hermione wandered down the winding lane from the small hill upon which the village of St. Agnes was perched. She checked the piece of parchment with the address that Charlie had procured for her again, for good measure. It was slightly unusual for a witch to request visitors to arrive in the Muggle way, but Andromeda Tonks could be forgiven for insisting on additional security precautions. Hermione was hardly in a position to request special treatment; the only reason she managed to get the address in the first place was that Charlie had been friends with Tonks at Hogwarts. Few people in the wizarding world would turn down Charlie Weasley when he was being persuasive, and fortunately Mrs Tonks wasn't one of them.

The wind seemed to be disinclined to go through the trouble of going around Hermione, and the chill wriggled into her bones; as usual, she had forgotten her Warming Charms. The air had a tinge of salt to it; even though she couldn't see the sea she could sense that it was near, tucked away behind the rolling hills.

Finally, she spotted number 73, or 'Rivendell' as the iron plate proudly proclaimed. After ascertaining that there were no Muggles with a sudden fancy for a walk before nightfall around, she discreetly shook her wand out of her sleeve.

"Revelio," she whispered at the hedge next to the Tolkien fan's driveway, and a neat wrought-iron gate framed in wilted rose vines appeared. A sign, slightly askew, informed the visitor that they were about to enter World's End. Hermione didn't quite know what to make of the name. She opened the gate and stepped into the garden on the other side of the wall.

It was as depressing as most English gardens on a cold day in February, but Hermione noticed that the daffodils nestling against the wall soon would bloom. Suddenly, she was hit by a wave of longing for the garden at the Dower House in Wiltshire, where little portents of spring would be visible everywhere now. She was almost at the door of the handsome Edwardian house before she collected herself and started to take note of her surroundings again.

The house, with its high gables and bay windows, could have been situated almost anywhere in Britain. It didn't look anything like a house built by wizards; not like the Burrow did. Hermione remembered that Ted Tonks had been Muggle-born; maybe this was his family home? Or maybe the Tonks had just bought it from someone else like normal people do, she scolded herself, raising her hand to the door knocker which was shaped like the head of a lion.

She almost fell backwards in surprise when it suddenly came to life and roared at her, before it started bashing the ring in its mouth against the door with great enthusiasm.

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" someone shouted over the pounding from inside the house, and abruptly the door was flung open. "Stop!" the woman roared at the doorknocker, and after a last thud the lion's cast iron features were immobile again. "Ruddy thing," Andromeda Tonks muttered, casting a quick charm to get rid of the splinters the vigorous knocking had caused. Once she was satisfied with the state of her front door, she turned to Hermione. She didn't appear to be overly impressed, but politely held the door open and gesticulated to Hermione to enter despite her apparent misgivings.

"Do come in. Sorry about the racket, that blasted knocker has a mind of its own."

Hermione advanced cautiously, finding herself in a surprisingly modern-looking home with Kandinsky prints and sleek Scandinavian furniture. Once they had been fortified with a cup of tea (procured with no sign of house-elf assistance, Hermione noticed) and were seated on a stern-looking leather couch with a fair amount of distance between them, it was down to brass tacks immediately.

Hermione had used the scant amount of time it took Mrs Tonks to prepare the refreshments to furtively study the older witch. From observing the Black family tree at Grimmauld Place, she knew that Andromeda was older than Narcissa but younger than Bellatrix, which would place her in her mid-fifties. They had met before, albeit briefly, at Bill and Fleur's wedding, so Andromeda's startling likeness to both Bellatrix, who had the classic Black looks also present in Sirius, and Narcissa, who had inherited her fair hair and blue eyes from their Rosier mother, did not come as a surprise.

Even so, Hermione's older eyes noticed details she hadn't seen when they had celebrated their friends' wedding all those years ago; the loss of a husband and daughter, and a son-in-law to boot, were probably responsible for the deep ridges pulling down Andromeda's thin lips. The fleeting impression of sadness was at odds with her bright company smile that Hermione recognised from Narcissa.

A Black, at least the female variety, may be nursing a knife protruding from her back, but she would never let on that this was causing her discomfort in any way while entertaining guests. Hermione had learnt that they always would show a united front to anyone outside the family, regardless of the level of hostility contained within. Rows took place behind closed doors.

Despite knowing that Andromeda Tonks' life had been a litany of losses, there were signs encouraging Hermione to believe that she had chosen the happier path out of the three sisters. The sitting room, surprisingly pleasant despite its starkness, was packed with Muggle and wizarding photographs with people laughing at the camera. Andromeda's face was more lined than Narcissa's (which wasn't surprising, considering the amount of Galleons and time the latter spent to prevent any signs of ageing), but her grey-green eyes were framed by a fine web of laugh lines.

Hermione spotted some Lego bricks haphazardly piled on the glass dining table in the other corner of the room, and soon found other reminders that Ted Lupin also was a resident of World's End. He would be nine years old this year. A boy who must be Ted smiled and waved happily at her from several photographs, his appearance changing constantly. Hermione didn't look too closely, not wanting Mrs Tonks to notice this interest in her grandson. Not yet.

It is always a mistake to assume that you are the only person doing the watching. Andromeda's frank gaze, which seemed to take in everything from Hermione's Muggle sneakers to the way her unruly hair had been forced into an obviously elf-made chignon, took Hermione by surprise.

"Why did you ask Charlie Weasley to arrange an invitation for you to come here?" Andromeda asked, after she briskly had instructed Hermione to call her Andromeda, saying that it was ridiculous for her go by Mrs Tonks in this day and age.

Hermione was slightly ashamed that she hadn't managed to make this trip before; Harry had been chuffed to be asked to be Ted's godfather and towards the end it had been a very real concern of his that he would be letting Remus down; as if dying had been his own choice.

Without telling Narcissa, Hermione had even sent a wedding invitation to Andromeda. It had been returned unopened, and the few overtures she had made since then had been categorised by the same lack of success.

During her painful meanderings down memory lane, sifting through the wreckage of spilt lives at Grimmauld Place, Hermione had found the knife that Sirius had given Harry for Christmas. It had been the catalyst for her to approach Andromeda again, but going about it differently this time. It had taken quite some persuasion by Charlie to make Andromeda agree to this meeting, but the combination of his charm and Harry's name had finally been sufficient to convince her.

"I have a- I guess you could call it a bequest, from Harry. To Ted," Hermione said.

"We call him Teddy," Andromeda corrected her immediately, but with no sharpness in her voice.

"To Teddy, then. Harry got it from his godfather, and he- He wanted to pass it on, to be a great godfather. Everything Sirius was to him."

"I remember Sirius crowing about being asked to be Harry's godfather," Andromeda unexpectedly volunteered, with a wistful smile that wiped all the Black sternness from her face and suddenly made her at least as beautiful as Narcissa was. "He wouldn't shut up about it for months afterwards. Every time I saw him, he was boasting about how he'd teach Harry all the secrets of Hogwarts, how he'd be the greatest godfather ever."

Hermione had to blink rapidly several times at the thought of Sirius being so young and enthusiastic; she had only ever seen him like that in faded photographs. His love for his friends had always been his best quality. Sirius may have been reckless and impulsive, but he had really loved Harry, who never could have soaked up enough love to make up for losing his parents. She suddenly remembered that Andromeda had been Sirius' favourite cousin, too.

"He was," Hermione said, her voice slightly unsteady. "He was the best godfather Harry could have had. Truly."

"Then I'm glad. I hardly met him after he escaped from Azkaban and we found out he was innocent, but Dora told me enough to know that Harry Potter was very important to him."

"He was important to Harry, too."

Silence fell for a moment, before Hermione continued.

"Before he died Harry made a will." She had only found out the details almost a year after her return to the wizarding world, when a solemn Ministry official named Olwen Mortersell had presented herself at the Dower House. Hermione had been struck by the lack of panic this had induced in its inhabitants; she knew very well that there were plenty of things in the house that the Ministry had better not find out about, but she had underestimated the craftiness of the Malfoys.

Afterwards, she had realised that Draco must have had plenty of notice before the slightly stooping witch with the funereal voice appeared in the hall, while Hermione had been taken entirely by surprise when Miffy informed her that she had a visitor. In hindsight, it probably should have made her consider where else Malfoy had the advantage of her.

Mortersell had hummed and hawed about the irregularity of it all, before presenting a list of the objects Hermione had inherited from Harry. The only physical objects she could hand over were a rather sad-looking pile of books, which had been shrunk to fit into her matronly handbag, and a familiar-looking golden key.

Hermione had stretched out her hand to touch the familiar, battered edges of their schoolbooks, almost as if she didn't believe they were there, when she had spotted the reddish leather covers of the _'Handbook of Do It Yourself Broomcare'_ in the middle. It brought her straight back to being thirteen and the never-ceasing wonder of living in a magical castle with her friends, like nothing else had been able to for a very long time. That last summer before they went on the run Harry must have left the book at the Weasley's; before that he had always lugged it with him, wherever he went.

Normally, Hermione would have been mortified about crying in front of anyone, especially someone from the Ministry, but Olwen Mortersell showed rare understanding for being a Ministry representative and let Hermione compose herself again before returning to business.

"This is the key to vault 711 in Gringotts. Its contents now belong to you."

"711?" Hermione could have sworn Harry's vault had been six hundred-something, but it was so long ago-

"I am led to believe it was formerly the Black family vault." Mortersell offered, and Hermione almost snorted, despite herself. She would bet her last Galleon that the Ministry had examined the contents of the vault in minute detail and knew exactly who the original owners had been, back to the foundation of Gringotts. Come to think of it, she actually recalled reading somewhere that the Decree for Justifiable Confiscation had been extended to allow the Ministry one year - rather than thirty-one days - to examine potential Dark objects, to alleviate the backlog that had built up after the war. Predictably it had never been repealed, and it was now exactly one year ago she officially had reentered the magical world.

When Hermione didn't say anything, Mortersell continued.

"There is also the matter of number twelve, Grimmauld Place. You are now the rightful owner of the house, but as it is believed to be under the Fidelius charm we have not been able to gain access to verify that it is safe to enter." Only Hermione's determination not to admit that she knew how to get in prevented her from expressing her scorn. The Ministry would surely love nothing better than tearing through any secrets the house still held, securing whatever relics it could to shore up its Harry worship while it was at it.

"Really? That's a shame. Unfortunately I've to idea how to get in either," Hermione lied unashamedly, bolstered by the realisation that no surviving members or the Order of the Phoenix had broken ranks and divulged the location. Mortersell didn't dignify Hermione with a response, but only admonished her to notify the Ministry for assistance if - said with heavy emphasis and underlined with raised eyebrows - she would find herself in a position to enter the premises in the future.

Hermione had carefully put the old textbooks, the volumes on Quidditch and Harry's few Muggle books on the bookshelf in her room, but didn't think much about the rest of the bequest for a long time. Goblins had a long memory, and she hadn't had any pressing reason to enter the vaults at Gringotts yet. It was one of the few advantages of being married to Malfoy, she thought ruefully; the last months she been living on her quickly diminishing Muggle savings account, making excuses to various friends to go to Gringotts on her behalf when it couldn't be avoided any longer.

Perversely, it hadn't been the memory of Grimmauld Place as a tomb and a prison - the way it must have appeared to Sirius towards the end of his life - that had held Hermione back from returning for so long. Instead, it had been the memories of being happy there. In many respects it had been her last real home, and the thought of its inevitable decay after the war had kept her away until there was nowhere else left to go.

Through Ron, Hermione found out what happened to the rest of Harry's possessions; she already knew that Harry had left Ron the contents of the Potter vault, but it was a surprise to find out that the Potter family jewels had gone to Ginny. Hermione remembered seeing her wearing stunning Goblin-made jewellery at public occasions with a defiant look on her face, as proud and beautiful as a Valkyrie.

Unexpectedly, Hermione found that Ron was much more hesitant to use his inheritance. She understood where his reluctance came from, but she tried to convince him to come off it – it had been so like Harry to want to share his wealth. He showed no similar reluctance when it came to using Harry's battered old broomstick, now irrevocably left behind by newer and more advanced models but still lovingly cared for by Ron.

Harry had left his Invisibility Cloak to Ron and the Marauder's Map to his godson, but the charred remains had disappeared after the Battle of Hogwarts and were probably stowed away by the Ministry somewhere. Until Hermione took up residence at Grimmauld Place, the magic knife Sirius had once given to Harry had also disappeared in the chaos left after the war.

It was oddly comforting to be able to perform this final service for her friend. Somehow, being at World's End also seemed suitable for the occasion.

"He wanted Teddy to have this." Hermione dug into her handbag to retrieve the knife, with its shimmering white mother-of-pearl handle into which the various blades slid into when not in use. One blade had been melted into the handle since the battle at the Department of Mysteries. "It opens locks and unties knots. Not all, but most of them," she explained, feeling slightly foolish as Andromeda seemed to ignore her completely, grabbing hold of the knife and examining it in the rapidly fading daylight.

"Sirius used to have this at Hogwarts," Andromeda explained, seemingly still transfixed by the knife. Of course: Sirius had hardly been in a position to pop down to Diagon Alley to get Harry a Christmas present.

"Does Teddy know about Harry?" Hermione asked curiously and Andromeda regained some of her sternness.

"He knows the bare bones of it - why his parents died and why Harry Potter was so important." No doubt he would find out the details as soon as he went to Hogwarts, and unexpectedly Hermione's heart ached for the boy she never had met.

"May I meet him?" Ron already had, several times; but then Ron's worst crime was that he had been unconscious for more than six years, as George apparently was wont to point out.

Andromeda's mouth narrowed noticeably.

"I'd have to think about that."

Hermione had to ask, regardless of the risk of being thrown out; even when she finally had the shadow of a chance of meeting Harry's godson. Slugging back the last of her tea to fortify herself, she threw down the gauntlet in classic Gryffindor manner.

"Why did you get Narcissa and Draco out of Azkaban?"

She didn't remember that Andromeda had been in Slytherin until it was too late.

-oOo-

* * *

After the end of the war, it took months for the wizarding world to dust itself off and take stock of its surroundings. Most people were too dazed by its sudden end, too preoccupied with finding out who survived and how to get things working again, to pay much attention to the new political realities.

Andromeda mostly felt numb. It was too much; everything was too much, and this time there was no Ted Tonks there to pull her back up to the surface. Unexpectedly, it turned out be the Black heritage she had shunned that rose to catch her as she was falling down. Andromeda hadn't been raised to let things fall apart; sweet oblivion may beckon, but ultimately it was dismissed.

Instead, she spent her waking time looking after Teddy and reaching for anything that could take her mind off things for a short while. These days there was very little sleep to be had, and the hours were much too long.

Andromeda knew there lies one true mercy in dying young; when the future consists of infinite possibilities, you don't know which ones that eventually will become your life. Losing the life you laboriously carved out for yourself brings a different kind of pain; the bitter loss of what actually was bright and good, rather than what could have been.

While Teddy slept, like only angels and babies can, Andromeda read _The Daily Prophet_ for want of something better to do and distracted herself by spotting the new éminences grises picking up the reins at the Ministry.

In another life, she might have had some tears left for Harry Potter. As it was, she had no particular interest in either the eulogies or the interminable condemnations of the delusions of Hermione Granger who had killed him, and she turned a blind ear to the debate on whether Granger's broken mind or a Voldemort's final curse turned her against the Saviour of the wizarding world. Ted had been a staunch Anglican, and it was all a bit too Messianic for her taste.

Looking down at Teddy's chubby face, features slowly twisting in his dreams the way she remembered from Dora, Andromeda occasionally felt despondent at her task. Never before had she felt so cut off from her Muggle friends and family; even Ted's siblings didn't really realise the horror of the war that had claimed the lives of their brother and niece, and that 'nice man Dora brought to Granny's eightieth last year'.

Andromeda was left to walk around their empty house in London as the clock struck three in the morning again, the edges of dawn appearing at the horizon and her mind stuck on repeat.

Ted, Dora, battle, Emmeline, Death Eaters, Ted, Remus, Dora, Amelia, Ted, Arthur, Dora…

She never did find out how Ted had died. There was no way of knowing if Bellatrix had been there when they hunted him down, but it was excruciatingly likely. And Nymphadora, her baby… Andromeda would gladly have traded Remus' life a thousand times over to have her daughter back alive, but she knew that Dora wouldn't have seen it that way. For all her torn jeans and outrageous hair colours, Nymphadora had always taken her oath to protect the wizarding world very seriously; she could no more have been held back from fighting at the Battle of Hogwarts than one could have stopped her from changing her appearance at will.

Ever since Nymphadora had professed a desire to join the Aurors after her fifth year at Hogwarts, Andromeda had worried constantly; the fact that she only had one person to worry about now, rather than three, provided her with no comfort whatsoever.

One early morning she decided that she couldn't bear to stay in the house in Holland Road any longer. No matter where she turned her memories assaulted her: Dora building a nest of blankets and chairs in the sitting room as a child; Ted screaming in agony as he was tortured to reveal where Harry Potter was hiding; herself, emerging from the bathroom with her Muggle pregnancy test when she was carrying Dora… It was too much to bear, and she had to get out before it was too late.

Fortunately, the house could be converted back to the Muggle dwelling it once had been, and Andromeda used the quite astonishing amount of money it fetched to purchase a handsome house in Cornwall. There were both wizards and Muggles in the village, and when Teddy was a little older he could wander down to the sea on his own. In a moment of wry resignation she renamed the house 'World's End'; her world had certainly ended, so why not?

It was when she was packing up her things that she found an old photo of Narcissa, thrown into a box with mementos from Hogwarts and the scruffy-looking card with the first flower Ted had ever given her carefully pressed in it.

Narcissa, impossibly young and with nary a scowl marring her perfect features, was shyly smiling back at her as she opened the box and Andromeda was pulled back headlong into the past.

Giving Cissy up had almost been unbearable. One of many things destroyed by their poisonous legacy was the easy understanding and mutual loyalty between the three sisters. Before Bellatrix went off to school, the only thing any of them knew was their little schoolroom world, made up of house-elves, spells picked up from the adults on the sly and a shared, quiet understanding that it was Special to be a Black.

Once Bella returned after her first term at school she was different; she had no time for their little rituals anymore, and made no secret of her longing for bigger and better things beyond cramped attic rooms and the whispers stuck in the walls.

Even without Bella, Dromeda and Cissy had stuck together long after they had joined their elder sister in Slytherin House. Even after falling in love with Ted, Andromeda had tried to help her little sister navigate the choppy waters of Hogwarts at the brink of the official start of the First Wizarding War. Once she irrevocably had cast in her lot with Ted's and run away, however, all ties between them had been severed and Narcissa been cut loose. Yet, Andromeda had still cared enough to keep a photo of her tucked away.

Impatiently, the older Andromeda, with decades of separations weighing her down, cast the picture aside; didn't Cissy still have her husband and son, despite everything she had done? If ever there was proof that life was unfair…

It wasn't until she opened _The Daily Prophet_ a few days later that Andromeda paused to think. There, on page 3, in an ironical twist on the scantily clad blondes so beloved of Muggle tabloid readers, her brother-in-law was staring back at her. He had been brought before the Wizengamot and sentenced to thirty years in Azkaban. The relative leniency of the sentence was attributed to the lack of witnesses to most of his crimes; funny, how that hadn't stopped the Wizengamot from handing down heavy sentences before. They must be getting soft in their dotage, or more probably Lucius had managed to stow some cash away beyond the reach of both Voldemort and the Ministry. Strictly speaking, Lucius had never served his prior sentence in full, so it had been added on to the total.

Andromeda felt more alive than she had for months as she revelled in the savage pleasure of finally seeing Lucius get what was coming to him. They had known each other for a long time, almost since birth, and there had never been a time when Lucius hadn't made her uneasy. Yet, the preternaturally self-possessed boy with the almost dandified manners and the quick flashes of brutality had been a lot less frightening than the perfectly polished article that had taken his place in pure-blood society after Hogwarts.

By the time he had started to pursue Narcissa, it was too late for Andromeda to have any influence on her younger sister. She bitterly regretted not finding some way of staying in touch with Cissy. Most likely it would have been useless anyway; Cissy had refused all contact with Andromeda after her fall from grace, but she ought to have made the attempt, have tried harder…

The uncomfortable truth was that while she would have gone to considerable lengths to stop Cissy from marrying that man, Andromeda would not have risked her own future with Ted. Once she had made her decision nothing could have stopped her; not even the certain prospect of Cissy linking her fate to Lucius Malfoy.

Andromeda had thought she had come to terms with her choice years ago, but when she saw Lucius' face again it all came back to her; the impotent rage at his audacity in going after her younger sister, who lacked the wherewithal to stand firm in the face of his _most flattering_ interest, and Andromeda's own shame at realising that not even her favourite sister was worth saving if the trade was her own chance of loving a worthy man.

And now- now that worthy man (and oh, how she had loved him) was dead, and almost everyone else she had ever loved was dead with him; but Cissy was still alive.

Cissy, who had been such a quiet child, solemnly playing house with her dolls, not quite keeping up with her brighter older sisters but uncomplainingly following them everywhere. She had been as pretty as one of her dolls, all big round eyes and hair so bright it seemed to light up the dark rooms of the House of Black. Cissy, who never questioned endlessly like Andromeda or flew into fits of passion like Bella, but did what she was told like a good girl.

It took Andromeda two feedings of Teddy to track down a mention of Cissy in the papers. Apparently she had been held in Azkaban, where her husband and son remained, but had briefly been released to St. Mungo's on grounds of ill health. Andromeda suspected that Azkaban must be severely overcrowded as the authorities continued to round up Death Eaters and suspected collaborators, just like after the first war.

Neither Narcissa's or Draco's cases had been heard yet, as the Wizengamot worked its way down the ranks, starting with the best known Death Eaters or Voldemort sympathisers first.

With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Andromeda realised that not only was she going to go ahead with it; she was also going to have to get Draco released. Thirty years and two wars may have come between her and her sister, but losing one's only child to the shadows was something Andromeda found it only too easy to relate to. She couldn't allow it to happen to Cissy.

(It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair that Dora was lying cold in the ground, oh Dora…)

Resolutely ignoring that Narcissa, by all accounts, loved her husband as well as her son, Andromeda went through all issues of _The Daily Prophet_ that she could lay her hands on. Armed with a carefully annotated list of names, she left Teddy with Molly Weasley - gods knew the woman could use a distraction - and went to work.

It only took Andromeda three judiciously placed Floo calls and one personal visit to an old school friend of Ted's to identify who was officially responsible for the 'lesser Malfoys' case'. It took slightly longer to establish who actually was in charge. She was pleased to find that it was Kevin Kilberd, whom she was acquainted with from when she had worked for the Ministry in the Department of Magical Transportation before Nymphadora was born. Kevin was Irish and formerly of Gryffindor House; he had never been a stranger to bending the rules a little in the interest of expediency, and that would do her no harm at all.

Having planned her campaign with military efficiency, Andromeda arrived unannounced to see Kevin's superior two levels up; another acquaintance of yore.

Despite being a member of the Order of the Phoenix both times around, Andromeda's contribution to the war had of necessity been made in the shadows. Unnecessarily, Dumbledore had warned the Tonks not to attract Bella's attention if at all possible; ultimately it had been for nothing, but it still meant that there was no record of their Order membership.

As it turned out that didn't matter; the currency of choice these days was dead heroes, and she had an abundance of those to her name.

Andromeda had no objection to using sentimentality to her advantage, playing on the loneliness of her current situation and the fact that Narcissa was her only close relative still living. It wasn't particularly difficult to obtain what she wanted, even though she had to pass through three offices and more waiting rooms than she ever wanted to see again. Finally, she was left to hammer out the details with Kevin over a cup of tea.

He peered at her over the half-moon glasses he had acquired since she last saw him twenty years ago. There were tufts of grey hair at his temples, but otherwise time had been kind. Andromeda knew it hadn't been as generous to her; she had been forced to introduce herself before Kevin belatedly had recognised her.

"This is very much a one-time only concession, Dromeda – I'm sure you understand that," he said. She raised her elegant eyebrows in a mute question; did he really think she intended to make a habit of rescuing Voldemort's supporters?

"I guess what I'm trying to say is that-" Kevin started again. "Somehow, you've managed to get the Ministry to release one Death Eater, albeit young, under house arrest. If you decide later that you want to bring you influence to bear-"

"Come on, Kev. It's not like you to beat around the bush."

He smiled at her, looking relieved, and Andromeda remembered that Kevin had been quite the heart breaker when he was young. He still had a charming smile.

"Right - I'll be blunt, then. Remember that you asked for it."

"I will. Would you get to the point now?"

"Don't think you can do the same thing for Lucius Malfoy. There's no way in hell the powers that be will let him waltz off without being seen to pay for his crimes, regardless of whether he was out of favour with You-Know-Who at the end or not."

"I've no intention to do anything for Lucius Malfoy. Except possibly throwing the key to his cell into the North Sea, if I can get my hands on it."

"All right so," Kevin said, in that mild way of his that used to defuse arguments, while ensuring he got things his own way every single time. He had wielded it to great effect that time all hell had broken loose over wand imports from Serbia being contaminated by Droxies. Three departments had clashed over whose responsibility it was that the consignments hadn't been checked before being released. Kevin, the golden boy, had walked away unscathed even though it really had been his fault.

When they had finished their tea and Andromeda was gathering her things, finally locating her glasses by the side of her chair, she found Kevin looking at her searchingly.

"You're sure then, Dromeda?" he asked her once more.

"Yes, I am." Glasses firmly tucked into her handbag, she walked towards the door. She threw her parting shot at him over her shoulder: "Let Lucius rot."

-oOo-

* * *

"I suppose I always knew that I owed Cissy. For abandoning her to all of _them_," Andromeda said, with uncharacteristic venom at the Malfoys and the Blacks and the whole twisted world of blood and lineage and alliances she had escaped. "So I paid my debt the best way I could. How did you know it was me?"

She looked curiously at Hermione, who plucked nervously at her scarf before answering.

"I didn't exactly know. I just put all the facts together and you were the only person it could have been, really."

"So you tricked me?"

Hermione blushed.

"I suppose you could say that."

To her relief, Andromeda laughed.

"I should have realised. I never told anyone, and I highly doubt anyone in the Ministry would want to make it public knowledge. It was all swept under the carpet in the end - lenient sentences handed out, no public outcry. Neat all around."

Hermione answered her unspoken question.

"I didn't tell anyone either. I won't, if you don't want me to."

Andromeda seemed to consider something, but thought better of it.

"No, please don't."

Had Hermione been inclined to acknowledge his existence, she would have considered it very likely that Draco knew who was behind his unexpected release; it wasn't like him to let a mystery lie unexplored, especially when it concerned something as vital as his own and his mother's freedom.

Hermione and Andromeda would meet again; at their first meeting the older woman had been apprehensive of Hermione's association to the Malfoys, but it soon became evident that her wish to keep her distance conflicted with a natural curiosity about her sister that she finally was able to satisfy. Hermione visited Narcissa occasionally, always with the tacit understanding that Draco would be absent from the house, and she had no objection to letting slip to Andromeda that Narcissa was planting her dahlias or suffering from a particularly stubborn cold, if that made her happy.

A rapprochement between the sisters seemed unlikely; Hermione certainly wasn't going to meddle, no matter what she would have been tempted to do when she was younger. Yet, wizards lived long lives; there was no harm in keeping a door open.

Meanwhile, a cessation to the hostilities between Hermione and Draco seemed as absent as ever. They met, they acted for the benefit of the press and anyone else who cared to watch, and they parted.

If Hermione had been more inclined to consider the situation from Draco's perspective, it may have occurred to her that he was an only child to doting parents and had been largely deprived of friends that were his equals when he grew up.

Malfoys were not taught how to apologise.

* * *

**11AM, the 4th of April 2007 –The Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire**

There was nothing around them for miles except more bluebells, seemingly filling every corner of the forest. Ron and Hermione were sitting on a fallen log, looking down at the pool of dark brown water hidden in the woods. It wasn't the first time they were here, in the middle of the forest of Dean; it made a nice change not to be observed by anyone, and since they were only an Apparation away from civilisation and their warm beds, even Hermione could endure the reminiscences brought on by their sylvan surroundings.

Ron tossed a pebble into the pool, shattering the stillness of the surface and startling a bird in the hazel bush next to it.

"D'you get that new book you were on about last week?" he asked.

"The one they wouldn't order for me in Flourish and Blotts?" Hermione answered, correctly anticipating that Ron was unlikely to remember the title of _Charmes Protéiformes de la Vendée durant le 18ème Siècle_.

"Yeah, that one." He threw another pebble after the first, unsuccessfully trying to make it bounce on the water.

"No, I'll probably have to go to Paris to get it. No hardship, really. I just have to get the time to sort out a Portkey." The Prat could undoubtedly have procured it for her by clicking his fingers, Hermione realised in a flash of irritation.

They relapsed into silence.

"Watch out, you'll get sun-burnt," Hermione said, whispering something without moving that made Ron startle briefly.

"Wow, that feels a lot better." He studied her for a second, before remarking: "You're getting pretty good at the old wandless spells, aren't you?"

She wrinkled her nose.

"For that sort of stuff, yes – but it's not what I want to do. You'd need to be able to do powerful spells wandlessly for it to really make a difference, not just stopping a draft or Summoning a handkerchief."

"I s'ppose."

"I've done a lot of practising, but it's really hard." Hermione's face took on a familiar, mulish expression, and Ron didn't doubt for a second that she eventually would succeed or die trying. "I won't be caught out without a wand again."

"Well, don't go meeting strangers down back alleys then."

"You think you're so funny, Ronald Weasley."

"I think my record speaks for itself," he said, wiggling his eyebrows in a way that made Hermione snort despite her best efforts.

"That's why all the ladies are queueing up then, is it? Sending you knitted scarves and all?"

Ron made a face; he had become something of a favourite with elderly witches, who apparently took the long years he spent unconscious as a sign that he needed mothering to build up his strength again. He regularly received encouraging letters, cakes and even one witch's special Restorative Jelly, for which the recipe had been handed down through five generations. Unfortunately, George had been at the Burrow as Ron eagerly tore the package open, and had gleefully seized the opportunity to torment Ickle Ronniekins just like in the old days. Even Malfoy had probably heard about it, at this stage.

Ron was hoping that Hermione would deem the joke worn out by now; besides, there was something he wanted to talk to her about, and this was the best opening for bringing it up that he had spotted so far.

"You know what I was thinking about, after you were kidnapped?"

"This had better not be the fourteenth retelling of your dashing efforts to save me from the clutches of the villains," Hermione warned him.

"Nah. I'll let it rest for a few weeks, wouldn't want to let the shine wear off." She gave him a half-hearted poke with her elbow for that. "If you've finished hitting me?"

"For now, anyway."

"Good. Now-" He hesitated, and Hermione was intrigued; it wasn't exactly like Ron to show exaggerated caution before he spoke. "You know I've as much time for Ferret Boy as the next Gryffindor, provided it's George," George famously hated Malfoy's guts, "Still, it has to be said that he actually was trying to get you back in one piece when you were kidnapped."

Hermione snorted; after that build-up, it certainly didn't sound like much of a revelation.

"Come on, Hermione! He could easily have washed his hands of you, got an alibi sorted and waited for your body to turn up somewhere." Now, Ron had her attention.

"What do you mean?"

"Some people might have thanked their lucky stars that the annoying witch with the bushy hair," that earned him another dig that made him yelp before he continued, "had disappeared somewhere. But Malfoy wouldn't stop digging, not until that message arrived. Then he wouldn't hear of going to the Aurors, even if that would make him look seriously dodgy if-" Ron swallowed, having lost quite enough people he cared about already, thank-you-very-much. "If something happened to you."

"Something did happen to me," Hermione surly pointed out, not very interested in perceiving Malfoy in a better light despite Ron's rather compelling argument.

"Yeah, and then Malfoy was about to bring you to St. Mungo's. Don't pretend you don't know what _The_ _Daily Prophet_ would have made of that."

"So what? Am I supposed to fall to his feet in gratitude or something? Remember what he did, the bastard!" A few months ago there would have been an expletive in front of the epithet; even if Hermione hadn't recognised it herself yet, Ron definitely picked up the signs that her stance had mellowed somewhat.

"I remember, believe me. I just thought you should know, that's all."

"All right."

"Did I tell you Ginny got me tickets to the Chudley Cannon's next match, against the Holyhead Harpies? She swapped with the Beater of the Harpies."

"No, but I'm sure you'll tell me all about it. Oh, joy."

"Ha, bloody ha. Anyway, Ginny told me we have to be there by seven in the morning..." Ron made it sound like cruel and unusual punishment, but he didn't fool Hermione.


	25. Chapter 24 - Return From Exile

**Thanks so much to MysticDew for beta-ing, and for remaining undaunted in the face of ****computer-related catastrophes** and the alarming length of this story! 

* * *

**Chapter 24**

**Return From Exile**

**-oOo-**

* * *

**10PM, the 2****nd**** of May 2007 - Bermondsey Street, London**

It wasn't lost on Hermione that Draco's infraction essentially was to do the same thing to her as she had done to her own parents. Telling herself that she, at least, had been in possession of the purest of motives while Merlin knew what Malfoy's real reasons were didn't change anything, however. Seeing Dumbledore sending Harry to his end in Snape's memories had finally cured her of any residual belief that you could disassociate yourself from the consequences of your actions in the name of the greater good.

They had both been in the wrong, and now they were paying the price for it.

Assuming that Draco regarded it as a punishment not to be spending any more time with his wife than was strictly necessary, of course. He was probably delighted, Hermione thought sullenly as she dumped a pile of letters on the table in the hall in her apartment in Bermondsey Street. Her tenuous hold on the Muggle world was maintained by continuing the existence of Jean Taylor, who renewed her driving license and paid the mortgage, just as if Hermione hadn't left as soon as she got a chance to return where she belonged.

Being stranded in the Muggle world with no formal education, very little money and no friends or family had left Hermione determined never to be without options again. These days, she had a stash of emergency Muggle and wizarding money hidden away and an up-to-date Muggle CV. If she ever needed it, Angelina Weasley had even agreed to act as a reference for the years she had been living in the wizarding world; it would hardly even be a lie, considering that Hermione did work for Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes occasionally.

Rifling through the letters, Hermione discarded most of them summarily: charity, Tesco Clubcard, notice from the management company, gas bill (she really should come over here more often, it was due on Friday), charity again, letter – what was this? She frowned, putting the rest of the letters aside to examine it more closely. It looked like a letter from an actual human being, the address written by hand. Since Ron's missive more than two years ago she had barely received any of those.

Hermione had never been prone to hysteria, but when she recognised her mother's handwriting on the letter she had to put her head between her knees and take deep breaths for several minutes, before her hands stopped shaking enough to tackle the letter.

She must be mistaken. Lots of girls in the Sixties must have gone to convent school and been taught the same flowery handwriting by the nuns; the capital 'H' in in the postcode being slanted exactly the same way that her mother always wrote the first letter of her name didn't have to mean anything.

Carefully she nudged the letter open, taking pains not to tear the envelope.

_Dearest Jean, _

_I hope this letter finds you well. _

_Wendell and I would very much like to catch up with you on our upcoming visit to Britain. We will be there between the third__ and the seventeenth__ of May and hope that you will be able to meet us then. _

_If you would like to see us, please contact our solicitor who will assist with the practical arrangements. We have heard that Herefordshire is particularly lovely at this time of year. _

_We are both well, and are very much looking forward to seeing you again. _

_Love,_

_Monica Wilkins_

Once Hermione got over the shock, she almost laughed. Her mother had never been particularly skilled at dissemination, and this was as cagey as Hermione had ever seen her. Her parents might not even know that the war was over; it was hardly surprising that they would be cautious.

Her index finger reverently traced the letters, joined together by her mother's unmistakable, confident flourishes. She was almost afraid to consider what could have happened; had they actually remembered something? Hermione had an arrangement with a witch in Perth who had gone to Hogwarts with Bill. Jennifer would alert her if the wards placed on her parents' house were breached, but Hermione hadn't heard from her for months; it was unlikely that her parents had been coerced into writing the letter.

But how had they found her address? And how much did they remember?

Shoving the remaining post into her handbag, Hermione hastily decided to Apparate back to Grimmauld Place to send a message to Jennifer to ensure nothing was wrong in Australia; if this was a ruse set up by the Ministry, she had better stay in England and avoid drawing her parents into it any further.

_Dearest Jean… _The words kept turning over and over in her head, leaving her no room to figure out if they had a hidden meaning. And what was this business with Herefordshire? The Grangers were from Surrey, more than a hundred miles away, and Hermione couldn't recall ever visiting the other county, with or without her parents. She puzzled over it, noticing that their family solicitor was mentioned in the previous sentence. What was her name again?

The sound of her laughter startled Kreacher as he lovingly polished the plaque adorning the board his mother's head had been affixed to. Hermione didn't laugh very often these days, especially not when she was on her own.

Kreacher wasn't to know that Hermione just had remembered that the Grangers' solicitor was called Anne Cowley; clearly her mother hadn't trusted her to remember the name after all those years, and had added an oblique reference to Hereford cattle to jog her memory.

* * *

It was with trembling hands that Hermione checked the address again; yes, she was on the right street. Row after row of immaculately kept houses reminded her of Privet Drive, and it was a relief to recall that she was in a different county, on the other side of London. After satisfying herself that no one magical had interfered with Ms Cowley Hermione had obtained the address to a suburban house, where she was told that Mr and Mrs Wilkins would be staying during their holiday in England. She had been asked to call to see them the evening of their arrival from Australia, which seemed to suggest that were as anxious to see her as she was to meet them.

Hermione had arrived by Muggle transport; it seemed fitting. It also made harder to follow her, should anyone from the wizarding world be watching.

The curtains in number 77 were drawn. It required no small amount of courage to walk up the path to the mock-Tudor house and knock on the door. Hermione was clutching an emergency Portkey in her hand, and she had told Ron where she was going before she left Grimmauld Place; despite all her precautions, coming here suddenly seemed like a monumental mistake. Knowing that Ron would track down Malfoy and make him use the blood wards again if everything really went pear-shaped was scant comfort.

Without any warning the door opened, and for the first time in ten years Hermione found herself looking straight into her mother's eyes.

She only had a fraction of a second to register that they were framed by a few more lines than the last time they had met, and that the look in the older woman's face was a fiercely intelligent as ever. Then she was pulled into a frantic hug, the likes of which Narcissa Malfoy would never, ever be able to master.

"Oh, _Hermione_!" her mother almost wailed, and Hermione remembered that she had better attend to the necessities before considering the tantalising possibility that her parents had got their memories back. She returned the hug as fiercely as she could, trying to convey that they just had to be patient a little bit longer, before she broke the embrace and awkwardly stammered an explanation.

"Sorry, just have to use the loo- Just a sec-" Hermione dove into what turned out to be a wardrobe, and frantically cast all the wards she could remember. Then, she took one long breath to try to calm down and stop the wild hammering of her heart before hiding her wand again and returning to the hall.

Her composure lasted until she met her mother's eyes; all she could do then was to say the same word over and over again.

"Mum! Oh, mum!"

It wasn't until several minutes later Alan Granger managed to attract Hermione's attention with a discrete cough. In his daughter's eyes he looked exactly the same as he always had; thin grey hair, kind brown eyes and with a slightly diffident posture which belied his courage and determination. Helen Granger suddenly found herself bereft as Hermione flew across the hall to embrace her father.

When they had calmed down a little they moved into the kitchen in search of a badly needed cup of tea, advancing in what could best be described as a huddle while clinging onto each other. Letting go was not an option.

They spent a little while making tea and getting used to each other again, rediscovering little things that were easily forgotten but that brought on a rush of affection when recalled; the precise ring of Helen's laugh, Alan's insistence on pulling up his trouser legs slightly before sitting down and Hermione's way of invariably tease him about it.

Hermione had been prepared to be met by fear, not this easy acceptance; after all, her parents' last memory of their daughter was of her wand being used on them against their will. Maybe they just couldn't remember? The Statute of Secrecy had never irked her as much as it did right then; she knew that the Ministry would come down on her like a herd of Hippogriffs at feeding time if she started talking about magic to Muggles, but how would she ever be able to find out what her parents remembered if she couldn't speak of it?

Her father, perceptive as always, seemed to pick up on her frustration.

"Maybe we should start by telling our story, don't you think?"

"Yes, please," Hermione said gratefully, willing them to have remembered everything. Except perhaps the last few minutes before she had modified their memories.

"Well, you can stop looking so anxious. We know very well that you're a witch," he said and Hermione briefly closed her eyes in relief. She had no idea how it was possible, but she was elated beyond belief to have them back and knowing what she really was. "We remember everything."

"We think," her mother added, which lightened the atmosphere a little. "At our age, you know…" It had always been a family joke that her parents were ancient; now Hermione realised with a start that it almost was true.

"We know a little of what happened to you," Alan said, "enough not to- you know-" He peered around the room in a meaningful way, but despite his best intention he looked more like Mr Bean than James Bond.

"It's OK, Dad. I cast some wards when I got here, so we can say whatever we like." Hermione tried to hide her laughter at his would-be surreptitiousness, but he just winked at her.

"Good, I shall speak freely then. We know how the war ended and what happened afterwards, and we're sorry, Hermione." He stretched out his hand to squeeze her shoulder, "So sorry."

It was the first time Hermione was able to cry over Harry, and Fred and Colin and Tonks and Remus and Mr Weasley and everyone else, while her mother held her close and whispered soothing nothings. It didn't matter what words Helen used; they didn't change anything, but that was beside the point.

When Hermione recovered they were all a bit misty-eyed, and it was wordlessly agreed that another cup of tea was called for. The conversation turned to what had happened to their old house, and the Wilkins' arrival in Australia with newly modified memories.

Hermione was a little reluctant to ask how their memories had been restored. She was, after all, the reason they had to spend ten years on the other side of the world with no recollection what they had left behind. Even if her parents seemed curiously free of resentment for the treatment meted out to them, she didn't want to wake sleeping dragons.

In order to sit more comfortably Hermione had taken out her wand and placed it on a side table, where her father suddenly noticed it.

"That's not the same wand as you used to have, is it?" he asked, when his wife had finished telling Hermione about how they had sold their Australian practice and retired a few years ago.

"No, Dad. I had to get a new one." Hermione usually preferred not to dwell on the fate of her previous wand, or the fact that her current phoenix feather wand seemed considerably more powerful than her old one had been.

"Well, show us some magic then!" Alan Granger demanded enthusiastically. This was so far beyond Hermione's wildest imaginings that all she could do was to comply, searching her mind for something innocuous but visually compelling. Then she smiled, as she recalled a spell she had learnt from the Malfoy house-elves.

"Ordinem Litterae!" she commanded, and the scattered cookbooks on the bookshelf next to the stove lined themselves up in impeccable alphabetic order.

"Splendid! You must do that in Alan's office," Helen said amid general laughter.

"Fascinating. It's a little like nuclear power, isn't it? Useful, whether for destruction or creation," Alan mused, letting the slight on his office slide.

"Been thinking about it a bit, have you?" Hermione asked cautiously; he must have spent quite some time considering the nature of magic, which could have alarming consequences.

"Yes, as a matter of fact I have. It's not exactly the type of thing you simply take in your stride, is it?"

"We've seen quite a bit of magic in recent weeks," her mother added cheerfully, in her usual brisk way. "Some wizards seem awfully dependent on it, though. Can barely manage to tie their own shoelaces without it." Hermione snorted; it was true for most of the pure-blood wizards or witches she knew.

"Could you- Who was it that lifted your memories, do you know?" Hermione asked, abandoning all attempts at delicacy. She suspected that it had been the Australian Ministry of Magic; she knew that they tended to cast experimental spells first and ask questions later down there, and it wasn't inconceivable that they had assumed responsibility for her parents' case from the British Ministry.

"Oh, your partner in crime of course!" her mother said and Hermione almost fell off the couch.

"What?" she asked, horrified. Who was it that had got to her parents? The last thing she wanted was for them to be made vulnerable through her again.

"Don't worry, he only had good things to say about you," her mother reassured her, and Hermione was still in the dark.

"We got to know him quite well, actually. He had our memories restored first, of course, but then he stayed with us for a week or so afterwards. Didn't like his hotel too much, poor chap, so we said he could bunk in our place," her father explained.

"Who are you talking about?" Hermione burst out to puzzled looks from her parents.

"Draco, of course, I thought you knew that. Didn't he tell you?"

She could only stare at her mother in disbelief.

"Draco Malfoy got your memories back?" Hermione asked, just to confirm that she wasn't hearing things.

"Yes, dear. He told us to be careful about how we went about contacting you, but I did expect him to at least-"

"Are you sure?" Hermione interrupted.

"Of course I'm sure," Mrs Granger bristled a little at the implication that she had her facts wrong. "Draco spent quite a lot of time explaining about his family-" She didn't get any further before being interrupted by her daughter again.

"Draco _Malfoy_?" Hermione repeated. She hadn't really listened to anything being said, not since her husband's name was mentioned the first time.

"Yes, Hermione," her mother sighed. "The likelihood of us confusing him with another Draco of our acquaintance is rather slim, don't you think?"

"I don't believe this - how is it even possible? He shouldn't even know where you are, much less be able to bring you back!" Hermione couldn't be still any longer; she stood up and started to walk around the house, almost wringing her hands in agitation. It wasn't lost on her parents that she made sure to pick up her wand first, suddenly unwilling to leave it even a few yards away.

"We're jolly lucky he did, aren't we?" her father asked genially, trying as always to pour some oil on troubled waters.

"That depends on what he wants! Trust me, there is no bloody way he did this if there wasn't something in it for him!" Hermione exclaimed, her voice getting shriller and shriller. "You don't know him at all- He's-" She was stuck for words for a moment, and her mother jumped at the chance to get a word in.

"When we met him, Draco was perfectly pleasant. You can't deny that he did us a significant service. Is it really so hard to believe that he'd do something nice with no ulterior motives?" she asked calmly.

"Yes! It is!" Hermione almost wailed. She made a Herculean effort to calm down and explain herself in a more measured manner, carefully picking her words as she went. It wasn't made any easier by the fact that she was seething inwardly, absolutely furious with Draco. Not knowing why he had interfered did nothing to diminish her anger.

"Things are different in the wizarding world. Wizarding Britain," she corrected herself. "If you run into someone you don't like - in the supermarket, say," she gesticulated to her dad, who had been guilty of cowering in the canned goods aisle to avoid running into Hermione's piano teacher, after his daughter inexplicably had made all the keys on her instrument turn solid and rendered it useless. They had given up on the music lessons then, considering what had happened to Hermione's violin.

"They may be an absolute pain, but they're not _evil_," Hermione continued. "Whereas I regularly bump into people I fought against in the war, who wanted to kill me just because I'm Muggle-born. If you trust the wrong person, you could die. It's on a different level to- to making false insurance claims, or fiddle the accounts at the golf club! You can't just believe someone-"

"Are you saying that it's impossible to make up for your previous actions? That the people you fought against are irredeemable?" her father asked sternly and Hermione looked down, slightly ashamed of the implacable person she seemed to have turned into after the war.

"No, I'm not saying that," she said quietly. "But I am saying," she raised her head again, and looked determinedly at him, "is that you must be careful, and not just assume people can be trusted. The war may be over, but things are far from normal in our world."

"Well, I spoke to Draco quite a bit down there," Alan said, and Hermione looked at him curiously. She found it hard to imagine Draco having long conversations with a middle-aged Muggle, even if they both did know a lot about Renaissance art. "He seems to deeply regret his role in the war, and genuinely strives to make a positive contribution to the world instead."

Had it been anyone else, Hermione would simply have suggested that Draco was employing his not inconsiderable acting skills, but she knew her father. Alan Granger may appear to be less driven and spirited than the Granger women, but he had always been an acute judge of character. Hermione had always found it very difficult to lie to him; that was why she had opted for lying by omission when the wizarding world fell helter-skelter into war all those years ago. It would have been exceedingly difficult for Draco to pull the wool over her father's eyes for a whole week.

"Hermione, do you really think Draco did all this," he gesticulated to indicate the serendipity of the three of them being together for the first time in a decade, "for some sort of nefarious reasons?" She recognised his tone of voice; it had been employed when Hermione had been mean to her cousin or sneaked off without asking when they were in France on holidays. It heralded that she had fallen short of his expectations, and the resulting stab of disappointment with herself seemed to be hardwired into her spine whether she was eight or twenty-eight. It made her consider the question honestly, before reluctantly replying.

"No, I suppose not," she admitted. Hermione had been so flabbergasted that Draco had managed to find her parents that she had jumped straight to annoyance followed by fear, without seriously considering his intentions. She was under no illusions: wizarding Britain was full of people who cheerfully would kill her if they thought they would get away with it, but she was strangely certain that Draco wasn't one of them.

"In fact, I think that the reason he did it at all is quite interesting," Mr Granger continued. "First, you should know that it wasn't easy to- eh, to lift the magic." Hermione hadn't even though about that yet. "Draco had to find some world expert on memory magic, and get him to take the job off the books. And then there was all the skulduggery about getting to Australia and back without being noticed. It wasn't exactly something you'd do over your lunch break." Hermione was itching to point out that since Draco never had held down a job he didn't actually have any lunch breaks either, but managed to remain quiet. Despite herself, she was curious.

"One wonders why he would go through all this hassle for two Muggles he'd never met," Alan asked rhetorically.

"Yes Dad, I certainly do," Hermione said irritably and her father looked at her as if she was being particularly daft about something.

"Clearly the poor man is desperately trying to get back into your good books, Hermione," her mother, who never had been very patient, broke in.

Hermione was absolutely stunned for a moment, as she considered the idea. _Was _that_ it?_ she wondered, gobsmacked. Could he really have done all this just to make up for the blood wards? Even Hermione had given up on restoring her parents' memories; Draco had truly managed the impossible.

"Don't you think you should just forgive him? Whatever he did, surely he must have made up for it now?" her father asked gently.

After all those months of berating herself over how stupid she had been, or regurgitating how Malfoy had shown that he was utter scum and not changed a bit, it was surprisingly easy to admit that her father was right. More annoyingly, Ron had been right all along; she just hadn't wanted to admit it to herself, a little like when Ron had returned to them on the Horcrux hunt and she had clung on to her anger before she finally could forgive him. Hermione knew she had a tendency to hold on to her grievances for too long: she just couldn't seem to let go of them until she was good and ready. Ron would claim it came from being an only child; she suspected that it mostly was bloody-mindedness.

Hermione studiously ignored that she had been missing Draco quite a bit lately. It would be a welcome relief not to have his perfidy lurking at the back of her mind any longer, like a scab you just couldn't stop itching.

She still considered it a betrayal to be putting blood wards on her behind her back, but she could admit that Draco had changed since the war; he had even changed since they met again in her flat in Bermondsey Street. Draco had managed to find his own twisted path to redemption, and she didn't really doubt that he genuinely was trying to become a better man. When one considered where he had started from, it was indeed an impressive feat. He actually had saved her life too, Hermione suddenly recalled.

She sighed as she realised that she was going to give in, and her father smiled.

"Maybe you want to tell him yourself? He was very anxious about how things would go when we met, so I wouldn't be surprised if he was in the neighbourhood."

_Of course he is, the sneaky git, _Hermione thought; _he'll be lurking around here somewhere or my name is Ingolfr the Iambic. _

"Oh, sod it," she sighed in exasperation, wrenching the door to the garden open. Feeling half stupid, half defiant she called out: "Draco! I know you're there, don't make me come drag you out myself."

* * *

Desperately trying to cling on to his dignity, Draco advanced from the shadows under the apple trees where he had been keeping a discreet eye on the proceedings. Reconnoitring. Spying, if you will. It had absolutely nothing to do with how anxious he was to see how the reunion was going, or, for that matter, that this was the first time he had set eyes on Hermione for weeks. During the interminable wait to find out what was going on, he had been telling himself that his presence solely was motivated by concern for the outcome of his little gamble.

Draco hadn't been able to hear much of what had been going on in the house, due to the wards Hermione had cast as soon as she had arrived. He had been able to see straight into the kitchen, however, until Hermione suddenly had started pacing around. He didn't know what had been said in there to make her speak to him of her own accord for the first time for months, but he wasn't going to waste his chance. Steeling himself, he marched on towards the light.

Hermione was waiting for him, her hair shining like a halo against the brightly lit windows of the house. Her face was hidden by shadows.

In recent years, Draco had learnt how to apologise but he still found it hard to find the words; especially when he actually meant them.

"I'm sorry, Hermione. I knew I didn't have any right to go behind your back when I laid the wards. You're right, I had no intention to let you do the same to me. It was true that I mainly did it for your protection- I-" He hated it when he stammered. "I only ever used them once, when you were kidnapped."

Her face was still shrouded in darkness.

"Do you swear never to use the blood wards again, unless I'm in mortal danger?" she asked, her voice clear and cold.

"I swear it."

"And will you swear never do anything that affects me behind my back again?"

They both knew about vows and oaths than could go awry, and so Hermione accepted Draco's more cautious promise as he answered her:

"I swear not to deceive you about magic I use on you again."

She nodded and swung around so he could see her profile, motioning for him to come in through the half-open door . Side by side, they walked towards the house. Hermione had one parting shot to make before they went in to join her parents, who had been watching discreetly through the windows.

"You're forgiven. But if you ever do anything like that again, I'll have your guts for garters," she said in her normal voice, and Draco's shoulders dropped slightly in relief.

"I don't doubt it," he drawled, trying hard not to betray how happy he was. There would be lectures, and most probably another Vow, and he had no doubt that Hermione would come up with something spectacularly nasty in revenge should he ever cross the line again – but she was letting him back in after he almost had given up, and he was filled with an unfamiliar feeling of quiet elation.

* * *

Hermione promptly moved back to the Dower House; it was oddly like coming home. Narcissa was delighted to have her back and gracefully abstained from asking any awkward questions about where she had been or what the rift had been over. Pure-blood etiquette did have its advantages. Hermione found herself in the unaccustomed position of actually trusting both Malfoys. It came as a pleasant surprise, after all her recriminations against herself and her stupidity in putting her faith in them in the first place.

They all settled back into their routines with apparent delight; the atmosphere in the house was noticeably lighter these days, to the extent that sometimes even the house-elves were overheard whistling while they were polishing the family silver.

To their mutual acquaintances, it had been obvious that some sort of tiff had occurred, but since neither Hermione nor Draco had acknowledged it they weren't subjected to any comments about their détente either. Not to their faces, in any case.

Ron remained suspiciously quiet on the subject; Hermione attributed it to guilt over the fact that Draco must have wheedled him into passing on her parents' address. As Ron was happy to let sleeping dragons lie and the rest of his family took their tone from him, it was surprisingly easy for Draco to return to his place at Hermione's side among her friends.

Since Hermione had no particular wish to go boozing with Theo Nott, she didn't give a toss about what Draco's friends thought about it.


End file.
